Stars Don't Stand Still in the Sky
by cutflowers
Summary: Post-series. Miley and Lilly go to college and have the four best years of their lives. Then it ends. Eventual L/M, canon and OC het pairings along the way.
1. One

**Okay, I'm sure there's a ton of post-finale fics out there by now and they're probably all better than this. And I loved the finale so much I almost didn't want to write anything because it was so perfect. But then I had to, so here we are.**

—

**1**

**fall**

After the hugs there's the Happy Dance, and then more hugs, and then unpacking. Miley flops down on the bed, her bed. It doesn't have her duvet or anything on it yet. She only brought the one suitcase with her on the plane. Her dad is sending the rest of her things.

Lilly stands right next to the bed and grins down at her. She's still kind of bouncing with excitement, but jetlag is catching up to Miley fast. Lilly grins and bounces and looks like she might start clapping her hands if Miley doesn't give her something else to do with them.

"All right, one more hug," Miley says. "But I'm not getting up."

Lilly lies on the bed and they hug again, another of the really good ones, the kind where you can't breathe, but who cares about breathing when someone is happy enough to see you that they hug you like that? Then Lilly twists on her back next to Miley. She's lying on Miley's sweatshirt, because, well, Miley's sweatshirt pretty much covers the whole bed.

"I can't believe you're really here," Lilly says.

"I can't believe I really wore this sweatshirt," Miley says, yawning.

Lilly laughs. She sits up and scoots down the bed, lifting the edge of the sweatshirt and sticking her head under it. "What are you doing?" Miley asks as Lilly wiggles her way up inside it.

"I want to see if we can both really fit in it." Lilly's voice is muffled by the fabric.

"You're insane. You know that, right? Oof." One of Lilly's elbows catches her in the side and Miley isn't sure whether Lilly did it on purpose or not.

Lilly's head pops out next to Miley's. She's lying on her side now, and the neck hole isn't all that big, forcing their heads so close together that when Lilly lays hers on the pillow her forehead knocks against Miley's skull. "We totally fit," she chortles. "Your dad is ridiculous."

Miley lifts a hand and plucks at the front of the sweatshirt, tenting up the material. It might be tight at the neck, but there's still enough room in the rest of it that it comes up a foot off their bodies. "I think we could probably even get a few more people in here."

"You want me to go get Amber and Ashley from next door?" Lilly jokes.

"Ugh. No, thanks." Lilly starts to move again and Miley groans. "Now what are you doing?"

"Getting out."

"No," Miley tells her, yawning again. She is too tired for this. "You about cracked one of my ribs getting in. Just...let me lay here a minute and rest, and then we'll both get up and take it off that way."

So Lilly goes still, and then a second later she slides an arm across Miley's waist and hugs her again. A different kind of hug, a hug like the grip you use on a baby bird that's fallen out of its nest, so you can keep hold but not crush it. It's maybe an even better kind of hug than the other, because a hug like this can just keep going on forever.

Miley closes her eyes, and right before sleep knocks into her like Lilly's elbow, she thinks, _Paris has nothing on this_.

—

Lilly waits for Miley to fall asleep and then she carefully wriggles out of the sweatshirt, making sure to keep her elbows to herself this time. Miley might be jetlagged into oblivion, but Lilly is too happy to be still right now. She calls her parents and Oliver to give them the good news, and even then she doesn't think she can just go back to reading, so she calls Joannie.

"Miley came back," she squeals into the phone. Quietly.

"Huh," Joannie says. "That's a surprise."

"I know, right? I couldn't believe it when I opened up the door and she was there. She said there'll other tours and movies, but she's only going to get one chance to go to college with her best friend."

"So she's staying?"

"Yeah. She's staying." Lilly sits on the bed and draws her legs up so she can hug her knees. Miley's staying.

"Wow. Impressive. And here I thought you were going to be the one to cave first."

"What?" Lilly lets go of her knees, sits cross-legged. "What are you talking about?"

"I mean when I saw you calling, I thought you were going to tell me you changed your mind again and you were in Paris."

"I wasn't – I didn't change my mind. I wasn't going to Paris. Even if she didn't come back, I wasn't going to Paris." Lilly wonders where all her happiness went. Instead she feels like she did in the airport, walking away from Miley, every step the hardest thing she'd ever done.

"Good," Joannie says stoutly. "Stewart needs to know you aren't going to spend your life following her around like a puppy."

"It wasn't like that," Lilly protests, even though it kind of was. And if it was, what does it mean that this time Miley followed her?

"Whatever," Joannie says. "It was a pretty decent move, I'll give her that."

"More like spectacular."

"If you say so. I gotta run, T-cott. Go have fun."

"Yeah," Lilly says. She hangs up and looks over at Miley sleeping on the other bed. She pushes the conversation with Joannie out of her head and lets all of her shocked, happy wonder seep back up. Miley's here. Miley's staying. This is going to be the best four years of their lives.

—

Halfway through the term and Miley has her first big paper due in less than two days. She hasn't even picked a topic yet. She's at their desk, wading through article after article on her laptop while Lilly lies on her stomach on the bed, studying for a Psych midterm.

"I could be in Paris making a movie right now," Miley grumbles. "I could be having lunch with Tom Cruise."

Lilly points with her pencil. "Door's that way."

Miley sighs. It's a very dramatic and weighty sigh that would've looked great in a close-up on the big screen. Miley is sure it also would've provoked sympathy for her character's plight in hearts all across America, but when she looks over her shoulder, Lilly's just ignoring her.

"You could write my paper for me," Miley tries.

"No."

"But I gave up a big Hollywood movie so I could go to college with you!"

"And writing papers is part of college," Lilly says, unperturbed.

Miley sighs again and takes her laptop and stands right next to Lilly's bed until Lilly looks up at her. "What?"

"Move over."

"You've got your own bed."

"Oh, come on, I could be having french fries with Steven Spielberg at the Golden Arches of Triumph right now. The least you can do is scoot over half a foot."

Lilly rolls her eyes but moves, and Miley sprawls out on the bed, puts her laptop next to Lilly's textbook. Lilly's legs are bent at the knees, slowly swinging back and forth, and Miley copies her, careful not to let her feet go too far down and land on Lilly's pillow. Lilly has a thing about feet on her pillow.

"You're going to have to knock off the Steven Spielberg stuff," Lilly says, huffing.

"Oh, really?" Miley asks. "Because I can leave if it's bothering you. Paris is beautiful in the fall." She shifts a little on the bed, pretending like she's going to get up and head for the door. Lilly snakes her arm through Miley's and moves her foot so that it catches Miley's ankle.

"You're not going anywhere, Stewart."

Miley smiles and clicks on another article. Their joined legs swing up and down and up again. _Only one chance_, she thinks, and, _Don't screw it up._

—

One of the frats throws a party once finals finish. "We have to go," Lilly says. "Parties are a _huge_ part of the college experience." They've gone out a couple times with people they know from classes or the dorm – even Amber and Ashley, once – but they haven't gone to a _party_ party yet.

"But we're flying out tomorrow morning," Miley says.

"Exactly! And we need to celebrate the end of our first term at college and we aren't going to see each other for three weeks." Lilly's going to Atlanta to visit her mom for most of Christmas break, Miley back to Malibu.

The party's in a house off campus and it's ear-splitting loud even from outside. Inside it's packed and pounds with the energy of hundreds of college students freed from papers and exams. Lilly gets a red plastic cup full of beer from the skinny boy with tattooed forearms who's working the keg and takes it back to split with Miley, shielding her from view every time she drinks. College kids might not care about Miley being famous in the 'oh my god, I love you, can I have your autograph?' way, but it's a pretty safe bet they do in the 'hell yeah, I just scored two grand selling the tabloids pics of Hannah Montana drinking underage' one.

"Yeah, I guess that wouldn't be too good for your image," Lilly had said when Miley first brought up the issue.

Miley had stared at her. "Who cares about my image?" she said. "I'm worried about my _dad_."

It's their first real college party, and Lilly only means to drink a little, just for the experience, but it turns out it's really hard to tell how much you've been drinking when you're sharing a cup with someone else. And also? It's really hard to tell how much you've been drinking when you've been drinking.

The house is strung with colored Christmas lights. They blur and blink at Lilly as she stumbles through room after room, looking for Miley. Somehow Lilly lost her. But she found the kitchen and one of the girls in there made her a Long Island Ice Tea and it tasted so good after the beer Lilly had two. And now she's bringing one...half of one back to Miley, but Miley's gone.

Then there's a hand on her shoulder and Lilly tries to turn around but the room turns instead. Whoa. Rooms aren't supposed to do that. "Bad room," Lilly scolds.

"Lilly, are you okay?" It's Miley! Lilly found her!

"Miley! I thought I lost you!"

"You didn't lose me, I just went to the bathroom."

"Good," Lilly says. "I don't want to lose you. I brought you a present!" She holds up the half-empty cup.

Miley's eyes go all around to everyone except Lilly. "No thanks," she says. "I'm not drinking, remember?"

Oh yeah. They can't tell anyone else. It's a _secret_. "Don't worry – " Lilly winks at Miley, but then she doesn't think she did it right, so she does it again. " – I won't tell anyone your glasses are fake."

Miley laughs. "How much have you had to drink?"

Lilly tries to count on her fingers, but there's a problem. "What comes after five?" She used to know that! College is making her stupid!

"Okay, I think you need to sit down a minute. Come on, there's a couch over there." She takes the plastic cup from Lilly's hand and sets it down somewhere. "And we're gonna leave that here. You've definitely had enough."

Lilly waves bye-bye to her cup and Miley helps her across the room with an arm around her waist, which is really nice of her, because the room is still spinny because it's bad. When they get to the couch it jumps up to say hi to Lilly because it's a good couch and it's happy to see her so she doesn't even have to sit down because she already is. Miley is next to her and Lilly lays her head on Miley's shoulder. "I'm gonna take a nap."

"Oh, no," Miley says. "You are not passing out here. No passing out until we get back to the dorm. I'm not strong enough to haul you back unconscious."

"I love you," Lilly says. She loves Miley and she loves college and she loves this couch.

"I know," Miley says, patting her back.

"You know what? You know what else? I love your face." Lilly reaches up and pats it like Miley did her back, to show her how much. Miley pushes her hand down. "It's so...it's so..." It's really hard to think of the right word because she has to think of the right word because it's super important. "It's so _face-y_."

Miley laughs a little and pats her back again. "Seriously, how much did you drink?"

"I don't know. How much did _you_ drink?"

"Not more than half that first beer."

"Oh." Lilly considers this. "Then..." She would try to count again but she can't remember where she put her fingers. "A lot."

"Hey, do you want to dance?"

Lilly rolls her face up from Miley's shoulder at the new voice. There's a guy there. A cute guy. His name is Cute Guy because he's cute.

"Uh..." Lilly holds her breath and waits to see what Miley answers. _Eeney meeney Miley moe_, she sings in her head. It makes her giggle and then hiccough and then her stomach hurts. "Thanks, but I can't leave her like this."

"It's cool. Some other time." Cute Guy leaves. Aww, Cute Guy. Lilly misses him. He was her friend like the couch.

She puts her cheek back on Miley's shoulder. "Millian," she whispers. She pokes Miley in the stomach. Hey! That's where her fingers are!

"Yes, Lillian?"

"I have to tell you something else."

"What's that?"

"I'm gonna throw up."

"Oh, boy. Hang on, Lilly. Don't do it yet, okay?" Miley is making her get up and go across the room but the room is bad and spinny and why is it so mean it should be nice like the couch because it's not nice to be mean. Lilly learned that in preschool. The room should go to preschool because they don't teach you not to be mean in college.

Then Lilly is leaning against a wall. It's a nice wall and Miley is yelling at people. Not yelling at people, but talking loud and fast like she always does when she's trying to get people to do something without thinking too much about what it is or why they should do it. But usually when Miley talks like that they have costumes and now they don't have costumes. Miley isn't even wearing her fake glasses.

Lilly really needs to puke.

"Okay, here we go," Miley says, her arm around Lilly again. "I got everyone out of the bathroom."

Lilly stumbles into it and falls to her knees in front of the toilet when Miley lets go of her to shut the door, and toilets are like couches they all went to preschool and learned how to share so Lilly starts throwing up and throwing up always makes her throw up so she throws up some more.

"Easy there, I gotcha." Miley gathers her hair back and her hands feel good, which is nice because Lilly still can't stop throwing up. Even after she finishes she still isn't done, retching up air because there's nothing in her stomach even though it really feels like there's something in there that doesn't want to be.

After she stops, Miley helps her sit against the bathtub and gives her water to rinse her mouth with and spit in the toilet. "Feel better?" she asks.

Lilly groans.

"Well, I guess we can check this one off the college experience list. You're going to regret this when we have to get up at six tomorrow to get to the airport." She lets Lilly have more water and this time Lilly doesn't spit it out. It feels good on her throat. "I think we'd better get you back to the dorm before you pass out or throw up again."

Lilly shakes her head and it makes the bathroom go spinny. The room from before is a bad influence on it. "It's too far away. I can't do it."

"I'll help you." Miley takes her hands and pulls her up and Lilly leans into Miley and tries to get her arms to work so she can hug her.

"I'm so glad you're here," she says. She's so glad it makes her want to cry.

Miley's arms work a lot better than Lilly's and she hugs Lilly tight. "I wouldn't miss it for anything," she says, and most people? They'd just be saying that. But with Miley, Lilly knows it's true.

—

**spring**

There'd been a few paparazzi the first couple weeks of school in the fall, and of course Miley had done interviews over the break about her decision to go to college and how she's adjusting, etc., etc. That got people interested again, so the paparazzi follow her back to Stanford in January. There aren't many of them, it's too far a drive, and while campus security tries to run them off when they see them, Miley just smiles and waves. An eighteen-year-old popstar on her way to class or the dining hall doesn't quite sell magazines like an eighteen-year-old popstar caught in a sex or drug scandal, so she figures they'll be gone before Friday and they are.

Fall term she'd just taken some of the gen ed required classes, but this one she signs up for a couple music classes. Music has been a part of her whole life, a huge part, and she knows music and she's had vocal coaches. But she's never studied it like this before, academically, and now she has textbooks that say things like _This has pushed the very definition of music beyond the traditional European conception of music as a pattern of __notes__ toward a conception of music as organized __sound_ and she _loves_ it.

They have an hour-long discussion in class about whether or not that means Girl Talk is a musical artist, which ends when someone says she can't believe he hasn't been sued yet and everyone turns around and looks at Miley. "I've never sued anyone in my life," she tells them. "And I don't plan to start with him."

One of her classes studies early American popular composers and she drives Lilly crazy playing Irving Berlin for a week straight. "How can you stand this stuff?" Lilly cries on Tuesday night.

"It's so peppy!" Miley says. "Doesn't it make you happy?"

"Miley, she's singing about insurance fraud and adultery."

"But _cheerfully_."

Lilly groans and covers her head with her pillow and Miley regards her thoughtfully. "I think I'll do a cover of _Always_ on my next album. As a present for you."

"Please no," Lilly says through the pillow.

"But, Lilly, you always understand when the things I've planned need a helping hand."

Lilly lifts the pillow off her face. "You know, now that you don't have the Hannah secret anymore, I have a whole pile of embarrassing Miley photos that are just waiting to hit the internet."

"You never let me have any fun," Miley pouts.

"That is completely untrue."

"I'm listening to this music for the rest of college."

"Also completely untrue."

Miley holds out for another three days, but then Lilly threatens to put in a request to transfer to another room and she has to give in. Truthfully, it's been driving her crazy too, and besides they've already moved on to Scott Joplin in class.

Amber's in all her music classes, and Miley can't tell if it's because Amber's trying to suck up to her or because she's honestly interested. But Amber's not as bad when she's trying to get on your good side instead of torment you. She's just a nuisance, something that's always hovering and buzzing in the background, like a mosquito or Jackson.

Amber and Ashley are around so much, she and Lilly both start to get used to them, and the only thing that's really annoying is having to listen to the comments they make about everyone else. Then one day Miley realizes she's been dealing with Amber like she's still just Miley instead of Hannah too. So she makes Amber stop.

It seems like it's April before Miley can even blink and there's only a month left in the term. She and Lilly go to more parties, but Lilly is always careful not to drink as much as she did that first time. Once, though, Lilly gets a little bottle of vodka from Amber and the two of them drink it in their room, mixing it with orange juice and Sprite. Lilly says she feels bad that Miley never gets to drink at parties, even though Miley doesn't really care. Miley thinks it's not so much the drinking itself Lilly feels bad about as it is there's something fun and college-y she can do that Miley can't.

Half the bottle is gone and Miley's on her back on the bed, hanging her head upside down over the edge. Her brain is flipping around inside her skull and it needs more room. "This is so _weird_," she whispers.

"Shhh," Lilly says. It might have been a really loud whisper. Lilly's sitting at her desk. She has her chin propped on it and she's staring glumly at the different drink containers lined up on it. "This is a lot more fun when you're at a party."

"We should do something!" Miley says. She tries to roll over onto her stomach so she can get up from the bed, but then somehow she keeps rolling and ends up falling off it and hitting the floor on her hands and knees. "Whoa." She uses the bed to steady herself and stand, then sways in place for a minute when she lets it go. This would be a lot easier if the floor didn't keep moving. But Miley outsmarts it and stumbles over to the open window. "We should go out!"

"Noooo," says Lilly, shaking her head. "We can't go out, remember? That's why we're in here."

"Oh, yeah," Miley says. She puts her hand on the window screen. It's dark out, but there are lights along the sidewalks and she can see people walking around. A light breeze cools her palm. The screen feels funny on her hand and Miley pushes harder against it. Then suddenly her feet trip forward and Miley's face smushes onto glass and her hand is way, way outside with the breeze all around it. She has no idea what just happened.

"Miley, you broke the screen!" Lilly hisses.

Oh, that's what happened. Miley giggles. That's actually kind of funny. She waves her hand at the people outside and laughs some more. It's actually...it's really actually...actually it's _really_ funny. She laughs so much she has to sit down on the floor.

"This isn't funny!" Lilly says. Lilly has never understood Miley's sense of humor. But Miley doesn't stop laughing and finally Lilly is laughing too so she gets it because it's really actually funny.

Laughing makes Miley's stomach ache. She stops and then can't remember why she started. Why is she sitting on the floor? They're supposed to be having fun! "We should do something here if we can't go out." She's very proud of herself for figuring that out.

"Like what?" Lilly says.

Oh. Is she supposed to think of that too? Geez, Miley always has to do _everything_. "We can play a game. The kind with the drinking." Because they have things to drink!

But Lilly shakes her head. "I can't drink any more. I'll throw up. And I'm not throwing up."

"You think of something then," Miley pouts. Lilly never likes Miley's ideas. Miley's genius is so unappreciated.

"We could play Truth or Dare."

Wow. Lilly is really bad at thinking of things. "We already know everything," Miley points out. "And we're stuck in here." They can't do any good dares stuck in a dorm room.

"Spin the bottle?" Lilly suggests.

Miley looks to see what the bottle could land on. "I'm not making out with Beary Bear," she says.

"I can't believe you brought Beary Bear to _college_."

"He didn't want to miss anything!"

Lilly opens her mouth, and then she looks at the window and at the room and at Miley and shuts it again. "I'm sorry," she says. Her face is all sad now. No no no no no. Miley doesn't want Lilly to be sad. Only happy forever.

"You shouldn't be sorry. You should be happy." Miley smiles really big at her for an example.

Lilly shakes her head again. "I am sorry. Because if you were in Paris you could be out at a real party having fun right now instead of being in this stupid dorm room with me." Lilly thinks Paris would have been parties and glamour and fun. But it wouldn't have been. It wasn't.

Miley scrambles up from the floor and over to her desk. She opens up her laptop and starts some music playing, loud and fast and pulsing like a heart.

"What are you doing?" Lilly asks, gaping at her.

Miley holds out a hand. "We can have our own real party right here." Lilly lets Miley pull her up and then they're dancing, dancing, and they dance all over the room and Miley only almost falls once and Lilly not at all. And Lilly's happy and smiling and Miley's glad because Lilly shouldn't be sad and she shouldn't be sorry. Miley's the one who should be sorry.

She remembers Lilly telling her how nervous she was that Miley would bail on her for a world tour or a movie, and Miley wishes she could go back and make it so that worry had never come true, change things so there wasn't even a minute when Lilly believed that there were things more important to Miley than her. She wants to go back and fix things so that she'd turned down that movie first thing. Because maybe, maybe if Miley hadn't been going to leave Lilly, Lilly wouldn't have left her.

—

Campus is practically deserted. Lilly runs over to Lakeside after her Humanities final to get something to eat, and it's so obvious that the only people still here are the ones who have exams left. Lilly's got one more this afternoon and then she's done, but she's sticking around because Miley is one of the unlucky ones who has an exam scheduled for the last slot, next Monday morning.

She grabs a salad because it's easy and she won't have to worry about it getting cold while she crams for Calc between bites. She really thought she was done with math when she graduated high school, but Stanford requires at least one semester because of something they call disciplinary breadth. So far Lilly hasn't met anyone under the age of thirty who can say those words with a straight face.

She's just gotten to the right place in her notes when her phone goes off with a text from Joannie that just says, _wtf_. Lilly considers sending back a question mark, but she figures this'll be over faster if she calls.

"What's this bull about you not being in Malibu this summer?" Joannie says when she answers. Lilly had updated her status about it this morning before her exam.

"Hey, Joannie."

"Well?"

"Miley's doing that tour."

"And?"

"I'm going with her."

"Wait," Joannie deadpans. "Hang on. I'm so shocked I need to sit down."

Lilly rolls her eyes. "Well what do you expect me to do? She wants me to go and I kind of owe her. I mean, she's putting her career on hold so we can go to college together."

"Yeah, an eight-week sold-out tour really makes it sound like her career's suffering."

"You know what I mean."

"Yeah, you mean you two are totally co-dependent on each other."

Lilly laughs. "We are not!" She picks up her fork and pushes the salad around. "We're just best friends."

"I've got friends too, Truscott. That doesn't mean I plan my life around them."

"We don't – "

"Why is Miley at Stanford again?"

"She wanted to go to college with me," Lilly mutters.

"With you," Joannie says. "She's not there because she needs a freaking English degree. She needs _you_. That's why she gave up a multimillion dollar movie deal. She got there and she realized she couldn't do it without you."

Lilly lets her fork drop. She isn't sure she likes what Joannie's saying. She loves Miley, and she loves that Miley came back so they could go to college together, and she knows Miley loves her. But to say that they _need_ each other...That sounds different, somehow. Much more desperate and final. "That wasn't it. She just knows we won't get another chance at college together."

"Whatever," Joannie says, clearly done talking about Miley. "I'm just pissed you're bailing on me for the whole summer."

Lilly moves her head, trying to change gears and shake the rest of the conversation out of it. "You could come on the tour." She doesn't really want Joannie on the tour, and Miley would probably kill her if she knew Lilly was offering, but Lilly only does it because she's ninety-five percent sure Joannie will say –

"Ew. Two months of twenty-four/seven Stewart? Pass." Lilly will never admit it, but she kind of likes how much Joannie doesn't like Miley. It's nice to know that Joannie is friends with her because she likes _her_, not because she's trying to suck up to Lilly to get to Miley. Not that Lilly can't tell when someone's doing that and shut it down pretty quick, and not that it's happened all that much, but still. The times it did were enough. And compared to that, Joannie's dislike of Miley can be refreshing.

"Besides, I've been in freaking North Carolina the past nine months," Joannie continues. "This summer I'm going to be glued to the beach."

"I'll be in Malibu some in August. We should go surfing. Play a hockey game or something."

"Sure," Joannie agrees. "Just leave Stewart at home."

Then again, sometimes it can be kind of annoying how she and Miley don't get along. "No promises. Look, I've got an exam in an hour, so..."

"Good luck. See you in August."

Lilly hangs up and tries to go back to her Calc notes, but now she's distracted, and really she should have just texted Joannie back instead of calling. So what if Miley needs her, she decides. So what if Lilly needs Miley? That just means they love each other. That just means they're best friends. And okay, Lilly knows not every best friend relationship is like theirs. But it's not their fault they love each other so much. They're just lucky that they both have someone who's always there, who'll do anything for them, who they love more than anyone.

Lilly sucks in a breath and huffs it out. She really can't think about this right now. She has an exam in less than an hour.

—

**summer**

Eight weeks, twelve cities, hundreds of thousands of screaming fans. It might not be a major Hollywood movie with Spielberg and Cruise, but it's nice work if you can get it. Lilly shouts herself hoarse every night and Miley teases her about it constantly. "I'm the one who's supposed to lose her voice, you know. I'm the one doing all the work."

It's kinda sad, but the tour bus actually seems roomy after their dorm. They share the little room at the back of one of the buses, because otherwise one of them would be relegated to one of the bunks, which have absolutely no privacy or changing space or even a mirror.

Being on the road is fun at first. They get breakfast out every morning and grab lunches on the go and Lilly watches Miley rehearse. She calls Oliver and they talk for hours about which is more boring, the landscape between D.C. and Philadelphia or the road between Chicago and Detroit, and how many times in a row you can go to McDonalds before you get sick of their fries. Lilly says seven. Oliver says it's not possible to get sick of McDonalds fries. Miley says don't you two have anything better to talk about, and anyway it depends on if the fries are hot and have enough salt on them.

By the third week, most of the excitement's worn off. They're all tired of the bus, tired of having to get on it as soon as a show is done, tired of only getting off it to put on another one, just tired. Lilly feels cramped all the time, even with the wide-open landscapes rolling past her window, and she start dreaming about vegetables that aren't lettuce. And the concerts are amazing, but they all demand an obscene level of energy and they can't ever rest, really, not on the road, on the bus. Even the hotels get old.

This is when Lilly sees how much Miley loves what she does, because you have to love it all the way through to keep going like this, day after day, week after week. She knew it already, she'd seen it already, the lengths Miley went to with Hannah, but it feels different now, because now Hannah is gone. Because this is the future, this is Miley's life, and Lilly doesn't know how much longer she'll get to be a part of it.

During rehearsals, she spends a lot of time hanging out with Miley's dad. Except instead of hanging out, it's more like sitting next to him in front of the stage while he talks on his phone, which he does constantly. She listens to his side of about a million conversations while watching Miley and the backup dancers run through the choreography. That's just what they're doing late one Friday morning. They got into the city last night and usually wouldn't have to rehearse until this afternoon, but there was a slight problem at the last show Miley did in Columbus with the part where she's supposed to get lowered from the ceiling, so they're practicing that like crazy today to make sure it'll work on this stage.

They've been here a couple hours already and Lilly's finished the coffee she brought with her, but Mr. Stewart hasn't even gotten to touch his because every time he reaches for it, his phone rings again. He finally hangs up and takes a big gulp from his cup, then makes a face at how cold it is. "I guess it's just as well," he says, putting down the coffee and picking the phone back up. "If this thing's not ringing, that means I need to start on the two-mile list of people I have to call."

"Maybe I could help," Lilly suggests, because really, she's bored. She's seen the show a hundred times already, and even when she hadn't rehearsals were still boring. Plus it's really sad when coffee goes to waste. She's a college student. If there's one thing she knows, that's it. "I could call people if you want a break."

He looks at her for so long and with such an odd expression on his face that she starts to backpedal. "Or not. I mean, it was just an idea. I don't have to call anyone. But I could at least, like, answer yours when it rings and be all, 'Robby Stewart's phone, please hold' and maybe that way you could actually drink some of your coffee before it forms an ice cube."

"Lilly," he says slowly. He's got this smile that Lilly doesn't really like because it's the same one Miley gets right before she starts talking Lilly into doing some kind of crazy plan that never works out in the end. "You're a genius."

"Oh," Lilly says, a little confused about why, exactly. The man must really love his coffee. "Okay."

"I have to call this radio station in Boston about setting up an interview while we're there. They've been hounding me about setting a firm date, but I haven't gotten a chance to call them back." He hands her his phone. "Why don't you do it?"

"Wow. Okay." That seems like kind of a big deal. She'd been thinking about starting off with something a little smaller. But Boston, they're there in three weeks, and it would probably be better to do it in the morning, and they get in on a Wednesday, so it'll have to be either Thursday or Friday. Lilly doesn't know what else they have scheduled. "Uh, is Thursday better? Or Friday?"

"Friday," he says, smiling even more. It's starting to make her nervous. "They'll want Thursday, because it's before the first concert and they're giving away two tickets, but Friday's better for us."

That makes her even more nervous – she doesn't want to argue with anyone – but she volunteered for this, didn't she? "What's the number?"

He pulls it up for her and she calls and when someone picks up on the other end she blanks out for a minute, no idea what to say, but then her brain kicks in and she's saying, "This is Lilly Truscott, I'm calling on behalf of Miley Stewart." It's pretty easy from there, although it probably helps that people are willing to do basically anything to get Miley. Mr. Stewart listens carefully the whole way through that first call, nodding his head.

"That was so cool," Lilly breathes when she hangs up. It's a lot more fun to actually be doing something instead of just sitting and watching, and it makes her feel important, knowing that she's helping.

The next week he lets her make a few more calls and listens in, and after that she calls from her own phone because he's on his at the same time, doing other stuff and not even paying attention to what she says. It's really cool that he trusts her that much, and she won't admit it, but she loves how people stutter and then scramble around bending over backwards when she tells them who she's calling for.

One day she gets off the phone with Good Morning, America – _Good Morning, America_ – because Miley's doing an interview and a concert as part of their summer concert series when they're in New York, and one of the guys in the crew comes around asking what they all want for lunch. So Lilly and Mr. Stewart tell him what they want and then Mr. Stewart says, "I'll have to wait and ask Miley next time they have a break."

But Lilly remembers how last night she and Miley were talking about how awesome the turkey sandwiches at Banner are, so she says, "No, she wants a turkey sandwich. With lettuce, tomatoes, pickles, and honey mustard. No mayo. On wheat." Miley would rather have white, but Lilly thinks she needs to be eating healthier. They've had way too much fast food on the road.

The crew guy just kind of blinks at her. "You heard the lady," Mr. Stewart says, and crew guy starts a little and scribbles down what Lilly said and scurries away. And then when lunch comes Miley makes this happy noise and says, "This is exactly what I wanted, how did you guys know? Wheat, though?"

And Lilly says, "You need to eat healthier." Miley gives her a look, but Lilly gives her one right back, and that's the end of that.

Except then people are always asking her what Miley wants for lunch. And not just lunch, they keep asking her all kinds of questions that start with, "What does Ms. Stewart want us to...?" or, "Do you think we can...?" or, "Would it be all right if we change...?" At first, Lilly just answers, but then she realizes that these are the kind of questions they're really supposed to be asking Mr. Stewart, not her. So the next time someone comes to her with a question, Lilly says, "You should probably ask her dad."

The woman sighs. "Yeah," she says. "But it's a lot faster to ask you."

"What are you talking about?" Lilly says.

"If we ask Mr. Stewart, most of the time he just tells us he'll have to check with Miley," the woman explains. "But if we ask you, we get an answer. And it's always right."

Lilly thinks about that for a while, because on the one hand, she can see how that's faster, but on the other hand, she doesn't want Mr. Stewart to think she thinks she can just do whatever she wants without checking with him. Then she asks him about it. "Do you know how much more peaceful my life is without everybody yapping at me about every little thing all the time?" he says.

She checks with Miley after that, just to make sure Miley's not mad that Lilly's making all these decisions for her. Miley rolls her eyes. "Are you kidding?" she says. "Why would I be mad at you for making things easier for me?" So that's all right, and Lilly doesn't really mind people asking her things. She likes to feel involved.

And she is, kind of a lot, between that and the phone calls, even if they're just to schedule things and she figures out really quickly that those kinds of calls are small potatoes and Mr. Stewart is still handling all the big stuff himself. Like the movie deal he spends a lot of time talking to people about. He finally gets tired of Lilly asking him about the details of Miley's schedule, so he sets it up so that she can log into it on her phone and see what's there and even add stuff if she needs to. "What do all the colors mean?" she asks him, paging through it.

"Green is tentative, black is confirmed but it can be changed if necessary."

"What about red?" she says, looking at the entry for the concert in two days.

"That stuff's set in stone." Which makes sense, because all the concerts are in red, except once she gets to September it's all just one big red block labeled SCHOOL W/LILLY. Her throat gets kind of tight seeing that and she has to swallow to open it up. She pages back into the summer and notices something else.

"She's recording an album after the tour? Isn't that a lot to do in a month?"

"Yeah, but we've worked with all these people before, and Miley knows the songs already, so we'll get it done. Plus, you'll be gone."

"What does that have to do with anything?" Lilly asks.

He chuckles. "It means she'll actually want to be in the studio all day instead of hanging out at the beach or the mall with you."

"Oh," she says, thinking about how they had school all year, and then straight into the tour, and then apparently into the studio after that, and is she the only one who cares if Miley actually gets to relax every once in a while and everyone else is perfectly fine with her being worked to death? So she decides right then that as soon as she gets back from Atlanta, she's dragging Miley away from the studio and out to the beach or the movies every single chance she gets. Joannie will just have to suck it up.

That night they're back on the bus, heading for Boston. Lilly tries to sleep, but 95 is in horrible condition and it seems like they can't go half a mile without hitting a pothole. After a while she turns on her side and puts her hand on Miley's shoulder. It's warm and Lilly moves her thumb in little circles. "Miley?"

"What?" Miley whines. "I was almost asleep."

"I just wanted to say thank you."

"For what?" Miley asks.

"You know."

"Okay." The word comes out on a long exhale of breath and Lilly is pretty sure Miley's mostly asleep and has no idea what Lilly's talking about. Lilly inches forward and presses a kiss next to Miley's ear anyway. Miley squirms. "Go away, I'm sleeping."

"Sorry," Lilly says, but she doesn't move away. Instead she puts her head down on Miley's pillow, leaves her hand curled on Miley's shoulder, and whispers thank you one more time before she falls asleep.

—

By the time the tour ends, Miley's exhausted. A month's vacation before going back to school would be really nice, so it's too bad she has to head straight into the studio as soon as they're in Malibu. But there's not really any way around it, since she needs to get the bulk of her next album recorded. The label's pushing for a release next summer, and she recorded a single last Christmas and another over spring break, but this is the longest chunk of uninterrupted time she's going to have between now and then.

She'd thought it was hard juggling her career and school during high school, but at least then she'd been less than an hour from the city. It's not really possible to record an album over two months' worth of weekends if you have to drive six hours each way.

But being in the studio isn't so bad. It's a lot more laid back than being on tour, and even though they're really working hard to get things done, it seems like she actually has time to breathe. Getting to go home every night and sleep in her own bed helps a lot, too. And Lilly's in Atlanta, so Miley's glad to have something to keep her busy. And, like, she _has_ other friends, because hello. Superstar. But Oliver's out of town and so is Jesse, and does she really need to spend more than a few hours a month with Traci? No, she doesn't. She'd much rather be in the studio.

It's been about two weeks and they're driving home one night when her dad says, "Mile, there's something I need to talk to you about."

"Jackson's moving out?"

"No." Then he frowns. "Well, yes. Eventually. Lord, I hope so. But this has nothing to do with him. I got an offer the other day that I think you'd be real interested in."

That perks Miley way up, and she's all set to pump him for the details of whatever the project is, but then she realizes that he doesn't sound like he's about to deliver good news. He sounds more like he's debating whether he should have told her there was news at all. And she's pretty sure she knows why. "But..."

"But it would interfere with school."

Miley takes a breath and holds it a second, then says, "Turn it down."

"You don't even want to know what it is?"

"No." Part of her is screaming _yes_, screaming _Spielberg_ and _Tom Cruise_. But she already walked away from Spielberg and Tom Cruise, and whatever this is, she would walk away from it. She's not doing anything that interferes with college. She won't do that to Lilly. Or to herself.

It's just easier if she doesn't have to know what she's missing.

"You're su—"

"Yes. Turn it down." Even though she knows it has to be big for him to even bring it up, because he knows she's doing college.

"All right. I'll let them know." There's a tricky bit of traffic and her dad has to pay attention to his driving for a few minutes, but once things smooth out he says, "You know, I don't think I ever told you how proud I am of you for what you're doing, bud. It's a good thing. I'm so proud that you've grown up to be someone who can do something so unselfish."

He looks over at her but Miley turns her head to face out the window so she doesn't have to meet his eyes. She wishes he'd just let this drop. Because if she was really unselfish, she wouldn't have ever taken the Spielberg offer, would she? She wouldn't have asked Lilly to put off college for her, and when Lilly couldn't, she wouldn't have gotten on that plane. But she'd done all those thing. She'd gone to Paris. She hadn't known until she got there how alone she would be without Lilly.

"I mean it. You're becoming a wonderful young woman and I really am very proud of you."

She hates it when he's proud of her for something she doesn't deserve. Because even now, she wants to know what the offer is. Even now, she doesn't trust herself to say no if she did know. "It's nothing," she says. "There'll be other things to do after college."

"There will," he says, nodding. "But it's not nothing. I know it means a lot to Lilly."

Miley fidgets a little in her seat. "Well, Lilly means a lot to me."

"I know she does. And the trick to this business is that you can't ever let it make you lose sight of what's really important. When you find those things, you've got to hold onto them. But I guess I don't have to tell you that, do I?"

She thinks about that for a while. "Daddy? I want to add another song to the album."

He whistles. "I don't think we're gonna have time. We're cutting it close as it is."

"I'll record it at Christmas then. Or spring break. Just as long as it's on the album."

"Well, if it's that important to you, I'm sure we can work something out. This something new?"

"No," she says. "Something old."

—

**Yeah, yeah, I know, I know. Stanford's on quarters. But this story is long enough already omg.**

**Five chapters, one up per day. See y'all tomorrow.**


	2. Two

**Y'all are all so awesome you make me feel like a bad person. (), you rock. ScorpioP - If I had a wish to use, I might make that it. BCR - It was SO GAY, wasn't it? And so good (at least the A plot) I had to forgive the show for how much most of season three sucked.**

—

**2**

**fall**

They move in the day before Miley's birthday, which is ideal because it means before they leave she gets to eat cake and act surprised over the presents her dad gave her money to buy, and then on her actual birthday she'll get to go out and party. Their new dorm room is supposedly bigger than the old one, but Miley can't tell the difference. She goes up and down the hall asking around to see if anyone has a ruler unpacked yet so she can measure, because really, considering how much they pay to come here, it's important that Stanford isn't stiffing them when it comes to square footage.

"Quit stalling and help unload," Lilly tells her. "I'm not carrying everything myself. If you don't help, I'm leaving all your stuff in the car."

Miley follows her down the stairs and explains that she was trying to measure for Lilly's benefit, too, but Lilly just pulls a box out of the car and shoves it into Miley's arms. She has no appreciation for how Miley looks out for her.

She's sure there'll be at least a couple publications that do stories about her going back to school for another year, commitment to education, blah blah blah, but they don't see any paparazzi that day. They'd probably rather get shots of her once class has started and she's walking around in a school sweatshirt with a bookbag instead of covered in sweat hauling boxes up and down stairs. That's just fine with her, because it means the only things they have to worry about are getting everything unpacked and complaining about all the freshmen who have suddenly infested their campus.

After they get everything up in the room, they head for The Dish with Amber and Ashley and few of the Music majors Miley ran into when she went over to Braun to pay her practice room fees, and it seems like all of campus is covered in freshmen milling about with no idea where they're going. It wouldn't be so bad if they weren't blocking all the walkways and staring at her.

"There's a million pictures of her online," Amber snaps at one group of girls who are staring and whispering among themselves. "Go look at those, they'll last longer."

"Amber," Miley says mildly. "What did I say?"

"They were being rude! I can't say something when people are being rude?"

"You can say something nicely." Amber can't, of course, but it gets her to shut up.

Classes start and Miley's right, there's a few paparazzi the first couple days, but they're gone a lot faster than they were last year and they settle into routine. They go out on the weekends and get sushi every Thursday. Lilly's addicted to the chocolate chip cookies they have at Lakeside and they go late most nights, after everything else is closed, either by themselves or rounding up anyone on the hall who wants to go.

Thursday sushi is different, though, they never invite anyone else to that. It's their time. They always go to the same place, a tiny restaurant almost half an hour from campus that doesn't have the best lighting or most stable furniture but makes up for it with killer sushi really cheap. They get four rolls to split and three are always the same. The other one they change every time, working their way through the rest of the menu.

As soon as October hits, they get a pumpkin to carve and put in their window. It goes rotten way before Halloween and just after they throw it out Miley's dad sends word that Lilly's hamster died. "I know he was just a hamster," Lilly says, all teary. "But he was so fluffy and cute."

"We can get you another one," Miley suggests.

"No. I don't want another one. He'll just be fluffy and cute and then _die_."

So Miley gets her a fish instead, a purple one in a little bowl with bright blue fake rocks at the bottom. "A fish?" Lilly asks doubtfully when Miley unveils it.

"They required the least amount of effort of any animal at the pet store," Miley says. "Plus, it's not fluffy or cute, so you won't get too attached."

They keep the fish on top of Lilly's dresser and it stays alive even when they forget to change the water for so long it turns green. It's a good thing, too, because that happens more than once, both of them so busy with classes they forget or don't have time.

Miley's taking a mix this semester, some general requirements, some music. She still loves the music classes, but they're all the way across campus and as the term wears on she starts to wish she could avoid the walk. It's true that people here don't scream and mob her every time she steps out of the dorm room. Some of the freshmen still stare, and she's a trending topic practically every time she walks across campus, but really the most intrusive thing she ever has to deal with is an occasional request for an autograph. The paparazzi are long gone; this is nothing like L.A.

But she is still different. She is still treated differently. Most of it isn't overt. It's in how people notice her, watch her, how they turn to her, defer. Even some of her professors do it. She can never figure out if the ones who do are worse than the ones who don't, because the ones who don't are always making a point. That she's the same as everyone else. It only ends up drawing more attention to the fact that she isn't.

It doesn't seem like something she can complain about, even though it's exactly why she had Hannah all those years. Still, you can't really whine about getting preferential treatment. And it's not like Miley doesn't want people to like her. She does. The only thing is, they've all decided whether or not they like her long before she's ever laid eyes on them. Because liking her or not means something. Even not caring means something, and none of it really has anything to do with her. She tells herself it can't, because none of them know her. None of them want to know her, not even the ones who like her. They want her to know them.

And she knew things would be different when she told people about Hannah. She was used to the screaming fans and the star treatment. She'd thought she knew what it would be like. But she'd never had to live Hannah every day. Hannah had been concerts and tours and album signings. She'd always felt connected to everyone at those, she guessed because they'd all been there for the same reason. But it isn't connection she feels here in the quickly averted stares and silenced whispers, the deference and defiance she encounters in turns. Just the opposite. It's isolation.

Usually she ignores it. Usually she tells herself this is just one more thing she'll eventually get used to. Sometimes she can't. Sometimes walking across campus from class is like sandpaper on her skin and she is gladder than she'd like to get back to her dorm room and shut everyone else away. Sometimes – today – she sits and puts the side of her head down on her desk and lets herself breathe without anyone watching.

Lilly comes in after a while. She takes one look at Miley and shuts the door and says, "Are you okay?"

"Yeah," Miley says, but she doesn't move.

Lilly comes and puts her hand on Miley's forehead, checking for a fever, then lets her fingers linger in Miley's hair. "You sure about that?"

"Sometimes I feel like it wasn't Hannah I gave up, it was Miley." Herself.

Lilly sighs. "You'll always be Miley to me," she says, and Miley wonders if Lilly knows how precious that is to her, how irreplaceable. Lilly's hand falls to her side and Miley reaches out, grabs it.

"I know," she says, but what she's thinking is, _Don't let go_.

—

The only problem with college is that you have to study a whole lot more than in high school. Lilly got a B in Calculus last term, which would normally be fine, but she really needs to keep her scholarships so Bs make her a little nervous these days. She's got a French oral exam in a couple days – Oliver had made obscene noises when she told him about it, and she'd laughed and ordered him to get his mind out of the gutter – and she's been practicing for hours. When she shuts her eyes, verb conjugations dance on the insides of her eyelids, which she's thinking means she needs a break.

"I need a break."

Miley looks over from her laptop. She's supposed to be studying too, but Lilly is fairly certain she's watching videos of kittens being adorable on youtube. There is no way Lilly is ever letting Miley get a cat. Friends don't let friends become crazy cat women. "I fully support your need for a break."

"And I need ice cream. Or a milkshake or something."

"Then you shall have it!" Miley tosses the laptop aside and jumps off the bed. "Put your shoes on!"

Lilly shoves some on her feet over her fuzzy socks and pulls a sweatshirt over her head and she doesn't realize until she's got it on that Miley's left the room. She's out in the hall banging on people's doors and hollering at the top of her lungs. "Hey! Lilly needs a milkshake! Last call for Peninsula's!"

Lilly winces because quiet hours started half an hour ago, and some of the faces coming out of people's doors are amused and laughing but some of them aren't. Plus, she's wearing pajamas. She'd been thinking more along the lines of going to one of the dining halls than a trip off campus. Then Miley yells that everything's on her and all the pissed-off faces vanish, because nothing makes college kids love you faster than free food, and that's how Lilly finds herself in the middle of a mob heading out of the dorm at ten-thirty at night.

At first it's just most of the girls from their hall, but all the commotion attracts the attention of the boys one hall down, and by the time they spill outside and start jamming themselves into cars there must be over fifty kids.

They are totally going to get banned from Peninsula's. Which is a shame, because that place has awesome milkshakes.

They take up most of the restaurant, but it was pretty much empty before they showed up, so that's all right. Miley goes up and talks to the two girls behind the counter, and Lilly's guessing she must have promised them a seriously hefty tip, because they stop looking bitter about the horde of hungry students descending an hour before close and start looking like they're calculating how many pairs of shoes they're going to be able to buy after tonight.

Lilly gets wedged into a booth with Miley across from her and Ashley and some of the other girls from the hall and a couple of boys packed in around them. One of the waitresses comes by to take all their orders and everyone's laughing and joking and over half of them are in pajamas like Lilly, and this wasn't the break she was envisaging but she'll take it.

Their drinks come – Lilly got the banana milkshake, and seriously. _Awesome_. – and one of the boys starts ranting about how the agricultural industry is destroying the environment. He sounds just like Sarah, and Lilly and Miley and Ashley all trade smiles and rolled eyes until Alice, who lives two doors down from them and is currently sitting next to Lilly, tells Eamonn to shove it because she's seen how many Cheetos he eats.

The waitress comes out with two giant orders of loaded nachos for the table to share and they all fall on them. They're surprisingly good with a banana milkshake.

"Okay," says Shayna from three rooms down, currently on Alice's other side. "So if you could do anything in the world, what would it be?"

Before anyone else can think of anything, one of the boys at the end of the booth pushes up his glasses and says, "I've always wanted own a vineyard."

Everyone boos.

"No, really, there's a grad program in oenology up at – "

They boo again and pelt him with the balled wrappers from their straws. He squirms around trying to duck and whining that they were the ones who asked. But, really. _Oenology_. He deserved it. People start throwing out answers after that, things like "Environmental lawyer" and "Bill Gates 2.0" and "Cure cancer" and "President." Lilly keeps quiet because she doesn't know, yet, what she wants to do. Everyone else has all these grand ambitions, but Lilly just wants to find something that makes her happy.

"Supermodel," Ashley says decisively. "Or marry a rich guy. Like, _really_ rich."

"Why are you even _in_ college?" Alice asks, and Lilly tries hard not to laugh because it really shouldn't be funny.

Eventually everyone looks at Miley, because eventually everyone always looks at Miley, and Miley grins and shrugs and says, "Already got my dream job."

Everyone groans and grabs up the straw wrappers that ricocheted off Gary and lob them at Miley. But Miley doesn't duck or dodge, just keeps smiling and lets them bounce off. She's looking at Lilly and smiling and Lilly's grinning back and she's thinking that everyone else here, they don't know. They weren't there the past six years, they haven't seen just how much Miley's dream means to her. And yeah, she's got it already. But she's still here, isn't she?

—

There doesn't seem to be any point in going to Atlanta over Thanksgiving. It's only a four-day weekend, and it would take her two days to fly out there and back, so really not worth it. Mr. Stewart plans this enormous meal and Lilly's dad comes, and so do Jesse and Oliver and his parents and Sienna and hers. They have to get a second table to fit everyone. Miley's dad designates one as the adults' table and one as the kids' and Miley protests because they're all over eighteen.

"You're a kid until you get a kid of your own," he tells her. "Which is not a suggestion, and you most certainly should not be doing anything that would lead to you having one." Then he crosses his arms over his chest and stares hard at her.

"Calm down, Daddy," Miley says. "I just don't want to have to eat at the same table as Jackson."

Lilly sits next to Oliver during the meal and they do disgustingly cute things like feed each other bites of turkey and wipe each other's mouths and use a single fork to split a piece of pie. Well, okay, two pieces of pie. Lilly's all for being disgustingly cute, but she's not going to miss out on having a whole slice of apple pie.

"Other people are trying to eat," Miley whispers to her at one point.

"At least Oliver and I aren't making out like you and Jesse," Lilly hisses back.

"We are not!" Miley says.

Lilly pokes her in the side. "Yeah, that's totally not why you guys keep going to the bathroom at the same time. You'd better watch out, I think your dad is onto you."

Miley pretends like she doesn't care, but Lilly notices she doesn't leave the table again and smiles in satisfaction.

The Saturday after Thanksgiving, Robby Ray takes Jackson and Rico and Sienna into LA for a football game and Miley and Jesse go out for dinner and a movie. Oliver strews rose petals all over Lilly and Miley's room, lights a dozen candles, and he and Lilly have sex for the first time.

It's perfect. It's everything Lilly ever imagined her first time would be: beautiful, romantic, with a boy she loves and who loves her completely.

She knows as soon as it happens that she's not going to marry him.

They take their time. Oliver's fingers shake as he slides her shirt up and over her head and Lilly doesn't know if it's from nerves or excitement, can't tell even when it's her own fingers shaking on the button of his jeans. He kisses her, touches her, tells her he loves her. They spend a long time like that, getting comfortable, and then he's so slow, so gentle. Oliver's face looks like he thinks he's the luckiest guy in the world.

"Good," Lilly can hear Miley saying in her head. "He'd better recognize he is." Lilly shoves the thought out, down and away. She doesn't want Miley here for this.

She kisses Oliver and runs her hands down his back, wraps her legs around his waist and lifts her hips to meet his. She doesn't...you know, before he does, but afterwards he makes sure she does. Then he cradles her in his arms and looks at her like she's the most beautiful, precious thing he's ever seen, and she loves him and it breaks her heart.

"I love you." He kisses her on the cheek. "That was awesome."

"Yeah. It was." She wants to feel giddy, the way Miley was when she told Lilly all the details of how she and Jesse had done this back in January. But instead there's only the same low ache in the pit of her stomach that dogged her for days after Miley's story.

"There's no one else I would have wanted to do that with."

"Me either. You made it so perfect. Thank you, Oliver."

"No," he says. "Thank _you_."

"I love you," she says, and she can't stop a few tears from leaking out of the corners of her eyes, because this is over. Not right now. But one day this relationship will end. She knows it like she knows her name and the color of the sky. She will not spend her life with this boy. She can't. Not when he can look at her like that, like she could be everything to him, and he never will be to her.

"Hey, are you okay?" Oliver wipes at the tears with his thumbs, then presses a small kiss to her forehead.

"I'm okay. It's just a lot, you know? This is a big deal."

"Yeah, it is. That's why I'm so glad it was with you. I love you, Lilly."

She loves him, and she wonders why that's not enough.

—

**spring**

It comes out in March that Jesse's cheating on her. The worst part, if there really is a worst part, because frankly all of it sucks, is that Miley doesn't even find out from him. She finds out from the internet.

He keeps calling her and she ignores him for a long time before she gets pissed off enough to answer just to tell him to leave her the hell alone. "Leave me the hell alone, Jesse."

"Miley, please, I'm so sorry. You have to let me explain. It didn't mean anything."

"Which time?" At least Jake hadn't insulted her further by acting like what he'd done was no big deal. And yeah, this is great. Now she gets to pick which one of her cheating ex-boyfriends is classier.

"Miley, it's just – you don't understand what it's like out on the road."

"Really, Jesse? Really? That's the argument you're going with? That I don't know what it's like on tour? Okay, let's see how far that one gets you."

"It's different for guys!"

"You know what? It really isn't. And even if it were, Oliver doesn't seem to have any problems not cheating on Lilly."

"Please, can I just...will you let me come out to Stanford? I just want to talk to you. I know we can work this out."

"You already worked it out when you hooked up with those girls," she tells him. "We're over. Now leave me the hell alone." She hangs up, turns the phone off and falls back on her bed, looking across Lilly's and out the window. It's a nice view. She's gonna get real familiar with it, too, since she doesn't plan on leaving this room for the next few days.

The door eases open but Miley just keeps staring out the window. She knows it has to be Lilly; she locked the door when she came in.

"Hey. I brought ice cream," Lilly says. So she knows. Of course she does. The whole damn world knows. Even though Miley knows she had to, sometimes she wishes she hadn't given up the Hannah secret.

Lilly sits on the edge of Miley's bed. She takes the phone from Miley's hand. "Did you talk to him?"

"Yeah."

"You okay?"

"Yeah." Then she starts crying. "No."

"Hey," Lilly says. "Hey. Come here." She tugs gently at Miley's arm and Miley sits up and lets Lilly wrap arms around her. She's getting Lilly's shirt wet, but it's not like they haven't cried on each other's shoulders before.

"What's wrong with me?" she whispers.

"What are you talking about?" Lilly says. "There's nothing wrong with you."

"But first Jake, and now Jesse...I mean, is there something about me that makes guys –"

"No." Lilly takes her by the shoulders and holds her at arm's length and makes Miley look at her straight on. "Now you listen to me, Miley Ray Stewart. There is nothing wrong with you. You dated a couple of guys who turned out to be jerks. It could happen to anyone. It happened to me, didn't it?"

Miley nods slowly.

"And there's nothing wrong with me, is there?"

Miley shakes her head. Not a single thing that she can think of.

"See? And one day, you're going to find someone who's not a jerk. Someone who loves everything about you and would do absolutely anything for you."

Miley smiles and sniffles and wipes at her eyes with the back of her hand. "So, basically someone just like you?"

Lilly laughs. "Exactly. I set high standards."

"Yeah," Miley says, sniffling again. "You do."

"Okay?" Lilly says, and Miley nods. It still sucks, but it's – It's better. Being with Lilly always makes things better. "What kind of ice cream did you get?" she asks.

"Double chocolate fudge ripple." Miley already knew it would be. That's their standard post-break-up ice cream.

"Do I have to go to class tomorrow?"

Lilly makes a shocked scoffing noise. "No way. I have an extremely important movie marathon scheduled that's going to take all day tomorrow. Possibly Friday too. It may even go into the weekend."

"Thanks," Miley says, and hugs her.

"You know, the ice cream's probably starting to melt."

Miley laughs and lets her go. "Well, we can't let that happen," she says, and they eat every bite and stay up all night watching movies and Miley knows that no matter how many jerks she dates, as long as she has Lilly, she'll be all right.

—

Oliver gets some free time mid-April and comes to visit for a week. "As far as my mother knows, I'm still on tour," he says when Miley opens the door to their dorm and finds him there.

She and Lilly both hug him, and then Miley sits at her desk while Lilly and Oliver cuddle on Lilly's bed and he tells them all about how the tour's going. They order in a pizza and spend most of the night catching up and at eleven Miley stands up and claps her hands together and says, "Okay, I'm going to go crash with Amber and Ashley. You both owe me _so much_."

The next morning, Miley takes Oliver to breakfast because Lilly has an early class. "So what are you thinking for this summer?" he asks her.

"Releasing an album." The last song got recorded over Christmas, and she's expecting to get a copy of the finished product any day now.

"Yeah, me too," he says, all casual-like.

She almost spits out her orange juice. "Really? That's awesome! It's about time!"

"I know, I know, I just didn't want to take time off from touring. But I've built up a pretty big fanbase now and the label thinks an album will really sell." Oliver's on an independent label that's always, like, a hundred grand away from going under, which is probably another reason he hasn't put an album out before now.

"Have you told Lilly yet?"

"Yeah, last night. We start recording day after tomorrow, and then we're going to wait until after it's out to go on tour again. Lilly's really excited."

"So am I! Do you realize this means we're all going to be in Malibu this summer? It's going to be epic."

"I know, right?" He falls silent and fiddles with the crumpled wrapper from his straw. "Sorry about Jesse."

"Yeah." She picks up her orange juice and drinks half of it down. She's not thirsty. She just needs a minute. "It's okay. I'm over it. There's this guy in one of my classes who keeps asking me out."

"Are you going to say yes?"

Miley grins. "Eventually."

"Aw, come on, have pity on the poor guy," Oliver groans. "You beautiful women have no idea how hard it is for guys to work up the nerve to ask you out."

"Okay," Miley laughs. "I'll say yes. But only as a personal favor to you." She studies him across the table. He looks good. Completely different from the dorky boy she remembers from middle school. "So the rock star life agrees with you, huh?"

"Are you kidding? I love it. I still can't believe it's actually my life. But I miss Lilly."

"Really?" Miley teases him. "I couldn't tell from the way you call her three times a day and text her thirty."

Oliver flushes and laughs and Miley suddenly misses that dorky boy from middle school. "Shut up."

"Don't worry, it's cute. Vomit-inducing and irritating as all get-out, but cute."

"Gee, thanks," he deadpans.

"Do you ever wish we were back in middle school?"

Oliver raises his eyebrows. "Middle school? Uh, _no_."

"Come on, we had fun."

"Are you sure you're remembering it right?"

"We did," Miley insists.

"Okay, we did," he admits. "But now is better."

And he's right, now is better, but she'll always be glad they had then.

—

The weeks after Oliver leaves are insanely busy and seem to flash by before Lilly can even blink. The end of the term's coming up and Lilly has three papers – one of them in French – and a literature review due and exams she needs to start studying for. Miley doesn't seem to get stressed at all. But then, it doesn't really matter what grades Miley ends up with. She's not exactly depending on scholarships to pay her way.

Lilly snaps at her the weekend after Oliver leaves, because she keeps trying to get Lilly to go out and do things – lunch and dinner and shopping and parties – and Lilly doesn't have _time_. Miley tilts her head and puts a hand on one hip and says, "I know you miss him, but that doesn't mean you have to shut yourself up in here."

"What?" Lilly says.

"Oliver. I know you miss him, but come on."

Lilly just stares at her, because she hasn't even thought about Oliver since he left. Well, she's thought about him, she's talked to him, but she hasn't thought about him being _gone_. She hasn't missed him. There was even a tiny part of her that was relieved when he left, because as much as she liked having him here, he'd taken up every second she wasn't in class and she's paying for that now. "It's not about Oliver," she says finally. "I just really need to write this paper."

"Uh-huh. Sure."

Lilly doesn't try to argue any more. It's easier to let Miley believe what she wants.

And Lilly kind of wants to believe it, too.

She loses herself in writing the paper, and then the next one after that, and before she knows it, it's May and finals are looming, and beyond that summer. She tosses in her bed one night, waiting for Miley to get back from the bathroom. It's late and Miley's only just gotten in. She had another date tonight with Evan. They just started going out a few weeks ago and they're in that stage where they're completely crazy over each other. They've gone out seven times in two weeks and the nights they don't go out they're on the phone for hours at a time.

Lilly likes him all right. "You know Evan," Miley had said to her right before their first date. "We met him at that party fall term freshman year, remember?"

The only thing Lilly remembered about that party was being woken up at five the next morning feeling like her head had gotten split in two during the night. Miley had given her water and aspirin but still made her get out of bed and go to the airport. It was completely unfair.

Miley showed Lilly a picture of Evan on her phone. "Oh, Cute Guy," Lilly said, suddenly remembering. "Yeah, he's cute."

He's nice, too, and he's not full of himself like Jake was or trying to be a bad boy like Jesse. Lilly knows Miley really likes him, so maybe this will work out, be a long-term thing.

Miley comes back and drops her bathroom bag on the dresser, flips the light off and crawls into her bed. "Sorry," she says. "We didn't mean to stay out so late. You didn't have to wait up for me."

"I couldn't sleep anyway," Lilly says. They already talked about how good the date went when Miley first came in, though they're saving the detailed discussion until tomorrow. Miley murmurs a good night that Lilly returns and then they're quiet, Lilly tossing and turning again, thinking.

Miley's phone goes off a few minutes later, playing one of the songs from her upcoming album, the one she recorded over Christmas. That means it's Evan. Miley just got a copy of the final cut of the album last week. It doesn't drop until this summer, but she's let a couple people listen to it already. And she let Evan decide what he wanted his ringtone to be, and he'd said he wanted his favorite song and then picked that one. He's not just cute, he does cute things like that, things that make Lilly and Miley aww in unison for a good long while.

Miley snatches it off her bedside table and Lilly listens to her squeal into it, though Miley's keeping her voice down enough that Lilly can't make out the words. "Sorry," she apologizes again once she's hung up. "Evan just wanted to say good night."

"It's okay." The only thing is, that song, the one Evan picked? That's Lilly's song. Every time Miley's new boyfriend calls, her phone plays a song she recorded for Lilly.

Lilly tosses one more time and ends up on her back. She takes a couple breaths. "Miley? Do you think you'll ever love someone more than you love me?"

Ever since Oliver left, ever since Miley nagged her about missing him too much when she wasn't, Lilly's been thinking. Because she was happy he came. She was happy to see him and show him everything and she was even glad Miley had given them a chance to be together again. But when he left, it was just another thing that happened on a Thursday. And she'd thought, she'd hoped, that maybe she'd been wrong at Thanksgiving. But she doesn't think she was.

"No," Miley says immediately. "No way. Look, I know I've been spending a lot of time with Evan lately, but that doesn't mean you're not still my number one priority. You're my best friend, Lilly, you'll always be the most important person to me. Come on, you don't really think I could love some guy more than you, do you? Don't worry, I'm always going to love you the most. I promise."

"Yeah," Lilly says absently. She knows Miley's trying to reassure her. Miley thinks this is about Evan. But it isn't about Evan. It isn't even about Oliver. It's about Lilly. It's about what Miley said just now, how quick she was to answer.

It might be all right, when you're a teenager, to love your best friend more than anyone in the world. But it's not supposed to _stay_ like that. You grow up, you fall in love, you get married, and that's who you're supposed to love the most. The guy you marry. It isn't even fair, is it, to marry someone if you know you'll only ever love them second best?

Because lying here and trying to picture some guy she could love more than Miley, she can't do it. Maybe it's just because he isn't real, she thinks, because she's just imagining some nebulous, hazy boy-shape far off in the future. Her brain insists on resolving the haze, on picturing Oliver instead, and that's worse.

She loves Oliver. He's the first boy she's ever really been in love with, but when it comes down to it, she knows she'll pick Miley over him. She already has, more times than she can count. And if it's like that with Oliver, who she's loved since she was four, what chance is there with some guy she doesn't even know yet?

"And okay, maybe I'm going a little overboard with Evan right now," Miley is saying. "But that's just because it's a new relationship! You've gotta cut me a little slack here, Lilly. I mean, you said these are going to be the best four years of our lives, and the best four years of our lives have to include dating, right?"

"Of course they do." She should probably clarify, tell Miley that she wasn't talking about Evan at all. But she doesn't know what Miley would say if she explains, what Miley's answer to her question would be then. She doesn't know what answer she wants.

"So you're not upset about Evan?"

"No. I like Evan. I'm glad it's going so well."

"Really?"

"Really. I just...just forget about it." And she doesn't know what she would do with Miley's answer, whatever it turned out to be. "I was thinking about something."

"But you're okay with Evan?"

"I told you, I like him. I think he's good for you." Better than the other guys Miley's dated. Evan's normal, and that's what Miley needs.

"Yeah, me too. Thanks, Lilly. Good night."

"Night." Maybe it's not so much that she needs to love someone more. Maybe it's that she needs to love Miley less. And maybe that will happen. They have college, but after that...after that, Miley will go off to her millions of movies and concerts and tours. That's her life, and Lilly's will be something else: a job, a husband, kids. Hasn't she already chosen that by coming here?

So they'll grow up, they'll grow apart, they'll have their own lives. And that will be okay, she tells herself, though something dark and slick clutches inside of her at the idea. That's the way it's supposed to be.

"Miley?" she whispers. Part of her hopes Miley's asleep already and she won't answer. "Why did you come back?"

"Back where?" Miley says, the edges rounded off her words. Almost asleep, then. Not quite.

"From Paris. Why did you come back to Stanford?" To her.

"I told you."

"I know, but...but why? What made you change your mind?"

"I missed you," Miley mumbles. "It wasn't any good without you."

Lilly stays quiet after that. She listens to Miley breathing in and out, in and out until it's the only sound she can hear. She remembers Joannie last year, saying, _She got there and she realized she couldn't do it without you._

But she'll have to, won't she? They both will.

—

**summer**

It's a lucky thing that summers are the busy season, because Lilly gets her old job back at the pier even though she's been gone for two years. She's working the early shift that none of the high school kids want because they're passed out until at least noon, and it's perfect because she just has time to meet up with Joannie and surf before she has to be at work. It's a part-time thing and her shift ends at noon, so after she picks up lunch and takes it over to eat with Oliver. He's still working on the last few tracks of his album, and Lilly doesn't think she's ever seen him this excited about anything. It's really cute.

She usually hangs out and watches for a couple hours and then drives across town to wherever Miley is. And she's got to admit, Miley giving up the Hannah secret has had its ups and downs, but it's really nice to be able to go see her without having to worry about getting into the whole Lola costume. Sometimes she misses Lola's clothes, though.

But it's probably for the best, since she doesn't have money to spend on maintaining two separate wardrobes anymore. Hence getting her old job back. It doesn't pay much, but she figures every little bit she makes is that much less she has to take out in loans.

Normally she hangs with Miley for the rest of the day while she does promotions for her new album – Lilly even gets to go on with her when she does Oprah, and Oprah does this whole bit about how important friendship is, which, yeah, whatever, _Lilly gets to be on Oprah_ – and then they head back to the house for dinner, or Lilly meets up with Oliver again, or all three of them go to the movies. Every Sunday morning she has brunch with her dad and every Sunday afternoon her mom calls and Lilly promises that, no, she hasn't forgotten she's supposed to spend all of August in Atlanta.

She and Oliver have a standing date for Saturday nights. It's probably selfish to keep going out with him when she knows they won't be together forever. In fact, she's sure it is. But he's the one that freaks out and runs in the other directions whenever someone accidentally mentions the m-word in his hearing, so it's not like he's planning a proposal and she's leading him on. And she loves him. She wants to keep doing that for as long as she can.

The morning shift is never busy and Lilly gets bored out of her mind a lot at work, so when her phone rings one morning she picks it up without even glancing at the display. She's been watching the kid who took Jackson's job at Rico's pick his nose for the past two hours, so even a wrong number would be welcome. But it's not a wrong number, it's Miley's dad.

"I need a favor," he says. "I'm real busy these next couple days, but the location for the launch party really needs to be nailed down by Thursday. Any way you think you could check out a few places for me? I'd ask Miley but she's got a full schedule, and you know what she'd like anyway."

"I don't know, Mr. S," Lilly says. "I've got work..."

"It'd be a real big help. And I am letting you live in my house rent-free for the summer. Buying you food..."

Lilly rolls her eyes. "I can't just leave work," she says, even though she hasn't helped a single customer all morning. The only person who would notice she was gone would be nose-picking guy, and he's so busy digging for treasure even he might not.

"At least take a look at the list I made up," Robby says. "I'm sending it to you now. I put my number one choice up top."

She takes the phone from her ear so she can check the list. The first place on it is Chuck E. Cheese! Of all the...She quickly scrolls through the rest of it and _none_ of the places are anywhere near acceptable. Someday Mr. Stewart is really going to have to come to terms with the fact that his baby girl has grown up. Miley would go crazy if she knew he was considering any of these places, and this launch is extra important because it's Miley's first one without Hannah. She puts the phone back to her ear. "You know what? Maybe it's better if you just let me do it after all."

"Thanks so much, Lilly. You're a lifesaver. I'll text you the budget details and the number for Miley's agent. She'll handle the booking once you pick a place."

About ten seconds later her phone buzzes with the text and Lilly's eyes go wide at the figure listed there. She glances from her phone to Nose-Picking Guy to the deserted pier. Really, the chances of anyone showing up before her shift ends are slim. "Hey, cover for me, will you?" she calls over to NPG.

"Uh, sure," he says after a second, sounding surprised enough that she thinks he probably forget she was there. So yeah, he probably wouldn't have noticed she wasn't. She finds a sheet of paper and a marker and writes_, Counter closed – see Rico's for assistance_. and then she's out of there. There's still a few hours before lunch, she should at least be able to scout a couple places.

The next morning she calls in sick and runs around to five more places, and then the next day is Thursday and she calls in sick again. She's starting to worry that maybe she shouldn't have taken this on, because she has a sneaking suspicion that Mr. Stewart would have been okay with any of the locations from yesterday, but Lilly can't let herself settle for anything that's less than perfect.

But then she finds it. The second place she goes that morning – even deserted Lilly can tell it'll be awesome, and she remembers Miley mentioning how much Traci likes this place. And as much as Lilly hates Traci, even she will admit that the girl knows what's hot.

Once Lilly dropped Miley's name, the manager had been more than happy to come down early and open the place up for her. Lilly asks about the price as soon as he's finished the tour and her eyebrows go up at his quote.

"Of course, we'd be happy to give an artist of Ms. Stewart's stature a significant discount," he says quickly.

"How significant?"

"Say, fifty percent? Would that be acceptable?"

Wow. That was easy. At fifty percent off, even Oliver would be able to afford doing his launch here. Which gives her an idea. "You know, I work with another artist who's coming out with his debut album soon."

It's obvious that the man is trying really, really hard not to wince, and it takes a second for Lilly to figure out why. She'd only been asking to see if there was any way she could get a discount for Oliver too, but this guy must think it's a two for one deal: either he lets Oliver play here or Miley goes somewhere else.

"Who is it?" he asks, and Lilly tells him. His face clears. "Oh, he's been touring a while, I caught one of his shows here last summer. He's good. When does the album drop?"

"End of August." About a month after Miley's. She's coming back here for it and then she and Miley will go back to Stanford together.

"Yeah, we can do that."

"Same price?"

He shrugs. "Sure."

She can't believe that worked. They shake on it and she tells him to expect phone calls today about the paperwork and then she goes out to the car and laughs for a full minute before she starts getting worried. Should she have done that? There hadn't been anyone there to tell her not to, but it seems vaguely wrong, somehow, using the leverage Miley gave her to get something for Oliver she couldn't have otherwise.

She drives around and thinks about it for a while, and then she calls Mr. Stewart and tells him she picked a place and they're getting it at a discount. "And while I was there, I got the manager to agree to let Oliver use it for his launch at the same price," she says, and waits to see if he gets upset or starts talking in that disappointed way all fathers have that lets you know you screwed up, big time.

But he just whistles and says, "That was some smart thinking, Lilly. You've got a real talent for this kind of thing. Speaking of, since I've got you on the phone, there were a couple other things I thought maybe you could help with..."

Except it turns out to be more than a couple things, and all of his ideas are horrible, and seriously, she doesn't understand how any of Miley's other albums had respectable launches with him in charge. After Lilly hangs up with him, she calls work and quits, because she's obviously not going to have time for it. And she wasn't making that much anyway. She'll have to take out the difference in loans, but she'll get by.

Oliver's so happy when she tells him that he picks her up and spins her around. "This is so awesome, Lilly! I'm going to have the best launch ever thanks to you!"

"You don't think your manager will be pissed I did it without checking with her first?"

"With a deal this good? No way! She's not going to be pissed, she's going to want to buy you dinner."

He spins her around again and Lilly laughs and kisses him, wishes she could give him everything he ever wants, just like this.

—

Miley goes to pick Lilly up from the airport and they hug each other for like twenty minutes straight. "You didn't have to come," Lilly says. "I could have taken a cab."

"Yeah, right," Miley says. "Like I want to listen to you bring up the time I didn't pick you up from the airport every time you want me to do something for the next year." Lilly crosses her arms over her chest and makes a face. Miley hugs her again anyway. "Besides, I couldn't wait to see you. Your boyfriend would be here too if he wasn't such a no good bum."

"Tomorrow's going to be so awesome." Tomorrow night is Oliver's launch, so he's a little busy right now.

They get Lilly's bags and head outside towards the car, and that's when the paparazzi find them. They were over at another door about twenty feet away, but one of them spots her, which means all of them do, and then they're all _right there_, screaming her name and asking her where she went and what she was doing there.

Miley forces her mouth into a smile and waves at them. "Didn't go anywhere, just picking someone up." They start screaming new questions, but there's too many for her to be able to pick any out, so she just keeps smiling and waves again.

"How'd they know you were here?" Lilly mutters in her ear. "You could have warned me. I just got off a plane, I look terrible."

"I didn't know! I don't think they did, either. They must've been here for someone else and got lucky." Miley's got one of Lilly's rolling suitcases, but she puts her free hand on Lilly's back and steers her across the drop-off area toward the car. About half the paparazzi split off and go back to wait for their original target, but the rest keep after them, the shouted questions resolving into the usual requests to know what she's doing next, where she's going, if she's satisfied with her album sales. "Going to a big launch party tomorrow," Miley calls to them. "Huge. At Diamond. There's gonna be so many stars there, you guys wouldn't have to work for a year afterwards."

The paparazzi dog them all the way back to the car and through the parking lot until Miley pays for their parking and pulls out on the highway. "Ah, L.A.," Lilly says. "It's so good to be back."

"Sorry," Miley says. "So how was Atlanta?" She knows already. They've been talking on the phone at least three hours every day. But maybe there's something Lilly forgot to tell her.

Lilly shrugs. "Boring."

"At least L.A. isn't that."

"Especially not tomorrow," Lilly says, grinning. "I talked to Oliver last night. He was so excited I thought he was going to explode."

"I saw him this morning, and I have to say that's a very real possibility."

Lilly giggles a little and then they lapse into silence. Lilly's leaning her head against the window and she's quiet so long Miley thinks maybe she fell asleep, but after a while she straightens up and glances at Miley and says, very tentatively, "Miley?"

"What?" Miley asks, wondering what the heck is making Lilly nervous.

"Do you think there's any way that tomorrow night you could maybe...try not to draw so much attention to yourself?"

Which isn't really fair, because it's not like Miley goes around asking for it. "Lilly, I didn't tell them about the party for _me_."

"I know, I know," Lilly says quickly. "And I know you don't mean for it to happen. But it does, and tomorrow is supposed to be Oliver's big day and I just – "

"Maybe I shouldn't go," Miley says, trying to keep her voice neutral and not show how hurt she is.

"Don't be crazy. You have to go. Oliver really wants you there, and so do I. Just forget I said anything. It was stupid and I know it's not your fault." She's babbling now, and Miley knows it's because Lilly knows that Miley is upset, even though she was trying to hide it, and somehow that makes her feel better.

Lilly trails off and the car gets quiet again, but it's an uncomfortable silence this time. Miley lets Lilly feel guilty for a few minutes because she deserves it.

"I could wear a disguise," Miley says after she judges Lilly has felt sufficiently bad for a sufficient length of time.

"Miley."

"No, really. I could use one of your old Lola wigs. Maybe the red one, then I could just slap on some clown makeup and no one would know it was me."

"_Miley_."

"Oh, no, I know! I could wear my fake glasses!"

Lilly laughs. "Okay, okay, that's enough, Superman." She shoots Miley a sly look and says, "So have you heard anything from Evan?"

Not this again. "Not this again." Miley's exasperated, but not as much as she would be if she wasn't still half-laughing. "No. I told you. We're not seeing each other anymore."

"But you like him. Aren't you worried he's going to start dating someone else over the summer?"

Miley rolls her eyes. "That's the whole reason we quit going out. So I wouldn't have to worry."

"But – "

"I can't do the long distance thing again, Lilly. And Evan and I only went out for a couple weeks. Maybe we'll go out again once we get back to school. But I'm not going to spend my whole summer worrying that he might cheat on me. I just...I can't." Lilly doesn't say anything. Miley looks at her out of the corner of her eye. "You're just upset because you like Evan better than anyone else I've dated."

"That's not it," Lilly says. Miley raises an eyebrow. "Okay, that's not _entirely_ it." Then she sighs. "As long as you aren't going to get hurt." Which is exactly what Miley's trying to make sure of.

The launch party is amazing and Miley dances with Lilly and Jackson and Sienna and doesn't draw any attention to herself at all, not counting when Oliver makes her come up and sing one of his songs with him. When they get ready to get in the limo to go to the after party, there's a giant throng of paparazzi outside and Miley makes Lilly and Oliver stop just inside the doors.

"Wait, wait, just a minute," she says, and pulls a thin hoodie sweatshirt from her bag and slides it on really quick, stuffing her hair into the hood. She has the glasses in her bag, too, and she puts those on. "Okay, go. You guys first."

Oliver doesn't get it, but he's laughing, his fingers threaded tight through Lilly's. "Come on, let's go," he says, tugging her towards the door.

"Wait," Lilly says, and pulls free, runs back to Miley and kisses her cheek. "You're ridiculous. I love you." And then they're gone through the door and Miley feels her pulse fluttering just under her skin, right where Lilly kissed, and she counts to ten before she follows.

She leaves them after the second party. There's going to be a third, but Miley bows out. She's tired, and it's Oliver's night, so she gets Traci to drop her off at her car and goes home.

It's light before Lilly gets back, and it's obvious she's trying to sneak into the room without anyone knowing, but Miley has the windows open and Lilly trips right outside one and then drops one of her shoes when she opens the door. Miley sits up in bed, and she knows the room is dark compared to outside and Lilly won't be able to see yet, so as soon as Lilly steps inside Miley lowers her voice as deep as she can and says, "You're in trouble now, young lady."

Lilly yelps and actually jumps a little and drops her other shoe, and Miley falls back laughing so hard she's worried she might pee. "Oh my god, Miley, you almost gave me a heart attack!" Lilly hisses. "I thought your dad was in here." She picks up a shoe and chucks it at Miley. It hits Miley's leg but she doesn't stop laughing.

"I seriously wish I had that on video," Miley says, gasping, and Lilly makes an annoyed sort of noise and turns the light on. Lilly's dress is all wrinkled and her hair is messed up and of course she still looks beautiful. Lilly just does that, somehow. It takes Miley hours in the morning to look anything like decent, but Lilly can roll out of bed and be so dazzling she'll knock you over. "I guess you had a good time?"

"Yeah. We went to the beach after the other party. I have sand in places – "

"Ew, ew, ew, I don't want to know!" Miley throws the shoe back at Lilly, who catches it easily. "I can't think about you and Oliver together, it's disgusting."

Lilly rolls her eyes. "Thanks a lot." She takes the shoes over to the closet and tosses them inside.

"It's not you, it's Oliver," Miley says. Lilly shoots her a look like that's not any better. "Oh, come on, Lilly. You have to admit if you weren't the one with him, you'd think it was gross too."

Lilly raises a finger and opens her mouth to protest. Then she closes her mouth and drops her hand and Miley smirks in victory. "I'm going to take a shower," Lilly says, obviously changing the subject.

"You might want to put on pajamas first. I'm pretty sure Daddy's up already."

Lilly narrows her eyes and looks back and forth between Miley's still-smirking face and the door. "I'm twenty years old and he's not my father and we're going back to Stanford tomorrow. He doesn't scare me."

Miley snorts. "Yeah, that's why you were sneaking in here like a ninja reject and jumped about a mile when you thought he'd caught you." She can tell that makes Lilly want to storm into the house just like that, to prove she's not scared, but in the end the fact that she actually _is_ wins out and she quickly trades her dress for a crumpled pair of pajamas on the floor. Miley makes an effort not to laugh at her. Just not very much of one.

"Don't forget to take your hair down," Miley reminds her. Lilly ignores her, but she does take her hair down before she stalks out the door with her shoulders pushed back and her chin jutting up. Miley lies on the bed and giggles until Lilly sticks her head back through the door a few seconds later.

"I would make an _awesome_ ninja, thank you very much," she snaps, and storms off. Miley grins up at the ceiling for so long her face hurts, and then she rolls over and grabs her pillow and laughs into it. She can't believe how happy she is that Lilly's back.

—


	3. Three

**sulpicia29: I know, it was seriously gay. Way more than I was expecting. And I do the same thing with talking to myself. You should see me in the car. I always hope other people think I'm on the phone, because otherwise I must look insane.**

**Thanks to everyone for reading!**

—

**3**

**fall**

After two years, Miley can't take it in the dorms any more, and most of the upperclassmen aren't on campus anyway, so they get an apartment in a complex near campus that caters to students. Somehow, in a shock to exactly no one, Amber and Ashley end up next door. But Lilly doesn't really mind. She guesses it's time to face facts: by now, they're kind of friends with Amber and Ashley.

It's not so bad. Amber's actually a lot better now, ever since that day spring term freshman year when she said something catty at lunch and Miley folded her arms over her chest and looked at Amber and calmly said, "All right, either you stop being a bitch or I stop talking to you."

Amber had sputtered a little and looked around to see everyone eating lunch with them staring at her with great interest. "I—I'm not a bitch."

"Good," Miley said. "Then it'll be easy for you to stop acting like one." Except, of course, it _wasn't_, but it had been hilarious to watch her try. There'd been two whole weeks where Amber would open her mouth and get half a word out only to snap it shut again. The other girls on the hall – who'd all been on the receiving end of at least one of Amber's barbs – started teasing her by clicking their teeth together whenever they saw her. It made Amber furious, and for a while Lilly hadn't been sure Amber's need to suck-up to Miley's fame would overcome her desire to be mean. She and Miley even had a bet going, but eventually Miley won on both counts and Amber figured out how to act like a halfway decent person.

They get a couple six packs of wine coolers to celebrate moving in and another year starting and by the time they've worked their way through one and half of them, Miley and Amber are singing a Sonny and Cher duet while Lilly and Ashley sit on the couch and laugh themselves sick watching.

"Encore!" Ashley yells when they finish and start taking deep, exaggerated bows, the ends of their hair sweeping the floor. Lilly puts two fingers in her mouth and whistles as loud as she can, then claps madly and seconds Ashley's request.

Miley waves them off. "Later, later," she says, and she and Amber collapse and sprawl out on the floor. They're all giggling and they haven't had enough to get drunk, but definitely enough to loosen things, which is probably why Miley starts giggling harder and then says, "You know, the last time I sang with you, I ended up being stained green for like a week."

"Oh my god," Amber says. "Oh my god, that was you!"

Miley sits up and stares at her in disbelief. "Of course it was me! I was Hannah, you idiot!"

"I know," Amber's saying, "I know, I just – I hadn't thought about it – " Miley grabs a pillow off the couch and slugs Amber across the face with it and Lilly is laughing so hard she's got tears coming out of her eyes and Ashley's going, "What? What are you guys talking about?"

"Singing with the Stars, Ash!" Amber wrestles the pillow away and whips it back at Miley's head. "Hey! You switched entrances with me! I could never figure out...but you knew what was going to happen! You set me up! You turned me green!"

"Nuh uh, that was her," Miley says, pointing at Lilly.

Lilly points straight back at Miley. "She was the whole reason you were on the show! It was all her idea!"

"Do you have any idea how long it took for that stuff to come off?" Amber shrieks, and Miley starts yelling that, yeah, in fact she has a _great_ idea how long it took and Ashley still has no idea what's going on, and Lilly just downs another drink and settles down into the couch to listen to Amber and Miley comparing everything they'd dried to get the dye off, smiling so much it makes her teeth ache.

Later they put on a movie and Amber and Ashley lie on the floor and Lilly stretches out across the couch and puts her head in Miley's lap. Miley's fingers play with her hair, and Lilly's vision is blurry enough that it's easier not to concentrate on the movie. She thinks about earlier instead, Miley singing _I got you, babe_ into a spatula, one finger sweeping across the room to land on Lilly, a smile curling her lips.

Amber's so pissed after that night that she doesn't speak to Lilly for a week, and for the next two years Lilly takes every opportunity she can to refer to that as "the best week of my life" in Amber's hearing. It invariably makes Amber snap, "Oh my god, I hate you!" and Lilly is always surprised by how much it delights her that Amber doesn't, really.

—

First week in October, Lilly comes down with the worst cold ever. It's Wednesday and she misses the next two days of classes, but she's scheduled to work in the language lab that Friday afternoon and she can't get anyone to cover for her because it's Friday afternoon. She can't afford to do anything to screw up her work-study, and she's not _actually_ dying, she just feels like she is, so she still goes in.

Being responsible sucks.

By all rights, she should have the place to herself and be able to sleep until her shift ends, but it turns out one of the Spanish profs gave an assignment to his intro class that's due at midnight tonight, so the place is packed with panicked freshmen who have never set foot inside before. Most of them just need her to show them how to get everything set up and started, but two of them are hopeless and she has to spend the next four hours going back and forth between them, physically pointing out where they need to click. Her only consolation is that the two idiots are probably going to catch her cold since she's been standing over their shoulders for hours.

The lab is open twenty-four/seven if you have your student ID, but it's not staffed after five on Fridays, so Lilly leaves the freaked-out freshmen to figure things out for themselves after that and stumbles her way from the building to the car to the apartment to her bed. She passes out and doesn't wake up until Miley sticks her head in the door two hours later. "Hey, Amber's here and we're heading out. You need anything before I leave?"

Lilly attempts to make a noise that means no. The fact that her nose is completely stuffed up and her throat is scratchy kind of complicates things, but she thinks Miley gets it.

"Feeling any better?"

"No. Sorry I'm going to miss your thing." Miley's in the University Singers this term. It's not exactly required for Music majors to be in one of the campus ensembles, but it is 'strongly encouraged.' Miley could probably have gotten out of it, because it's not like anyone can really claim she doesn't have any performance experience, but Lilly thinks she's actually been having fun with it. She knows Miley's been looking forward to tonight.

"Don't worry about it. You've seen me sing plenty of times. Just get some rest, okay? I'll bring you back some orange juice."

Lilly tries to go back to sleep after Miley leaves, but she ends up just watching the clock. She's seen Miley sing a million times, but this is different. And there's going to be people there, sure, but everyone else in the group is going to have parents or boyfriends or girlfriends or roommates there. Miley's dad couldn't come, and most of the people Miley's friendly with on campus are in the Singers too, and Ashley will be there, but she's going for Amber. If Lilly doesn't go, Miley won't have anyone who's there just for her.

At a quarter to eight, she gives up and forces herself out of bed. She sits in an empty row towards the back of the auditorium so she won't contaminate anyone else, and she's miserable, but the performance is worth it even if Miley doesn't have any of the solos. She could, but she hadn't wanted to take a spot or the spotlight from someone who might not have another chance at it.

Lilly goes straight home after and puts on pajamas and she's not getting out of bed again until Monday morning or she feels better, whichever comes last. She hears the front door open half an hour later, and then Miley moving around, and then her bedroom door cracks open. "Are you awake? I brought orange juice."

"I thought you were going out with everyone after."

"You're sick. I cancelled." Miley comes over and sets the juice on the night stand. "You should drink this. It's good for you."

Lilly can't think of anything she wants less than orange juice right now, but she's not going to tell Miley that. "You should have gone out," she says, scooching over because Miley's sitting on the bed next to her, swinging her legs up on it. She's still wearing the dress from the performance. "It's good for you to hang out with them."

"You're better for me," Miley says. She pets Lilly's forearm like it's a cat and Lilly lets her eyes close and snuggles into the bed. Miley wanted to get a cat when they first moved in here, but Lilly wouldn't allow it, because the first cat is the gateway cat. And besides, in two years Miley will be off jetting around the globe and Lilly knows she'd be the one stuck with the thing, and she's always been more of a dog person.

"Not when I'm sick."

"Nah," Miley says, her fingers still moving. "You're probably not contagious anymore. And if I'm going to get sick I've already caught it. I'll just camp out on the couch all night and if you need me you can yell."

It's times like this that Lilly kind of wishes that they didn't have the apartment and they were still stuck in one tiny dorm room, because she doesn't want Miley to go but there's no reason for her to stay. "Will you do me a favor?"

"What?"

"Will you sing me something from the performance? Since I missed it?"

"Come on, Lilly, you don't want to hear that. Trust me, you didn't miss anything."

"Please?" Lilly turns her head away from Miley and coughs. It's supposed to be a theatrical cough, but she really is sick and it catches in her chest and sends her into a hacking fit. She clears her throat when it ends and sees that Miley's gotten off the bed and is halfway across the room. "I thought I wasn't contagious anymore."

"That doesn't mean I want to be covered in your phlegm. I'm going to watch tv." Lilly pouts at her. Miley sighs. "All right, fine," she says, and Lilly shuts her eyes again and listens while Miley draws breath and begins to sing.

When the song ends, Lilly lets her eyes stay shut and lies there smiling until she can hear Miley start shifting around, restless. Probably wondering if Lilly fell asleep. So she opens her eyes and looks at Miley and says, "You want to know something?"

"What?"

"I tricked you. I went to the performance. I just wanted to hear you singing without all the other people."

"You want to know something?" Miley asks.

"What?"

"I knew you were there."

"You did not!" There's no way Miley could have known.

"Lilly, you coughed all the way through the second half." Okay, maybe one way. Lilly's still going to argue, but then her nose starts dripping and she has to spend a few minutes blowing it instead. "You're sick," Miley says. "You shouldn't have gone."

"Well, I did. I wanted to be there for you. And you shouldn't have skipped going out after."

"Well, I did. I wanted to be here for _you_." They're grinning at each other and then Miley shakes her head at the both of them. And maybe she's right and they're crazy, but it's okay because they're crazy together. "You want to come lay on the couch and watch movies with me?"

"I want you to sing me everything I coughed through," Lilly says.

So Miley does.

—

The end of November is speeding towards them but it's still fairly warm outside. A week before Thanksgiving, Miley leaves class and hurries across campus towards Roble Field. Lilly's playing a soccer game over there today and Miley promised she would stop by after class and watch. It's just a pick-up game, Lilly's not on the school team or anything. She could be, Miley's sure, but she says she's too busy already and she doesn't need to add daily practices and weekly games to it.

The field is dotted with students studying and a couple frisbee games and people jogging around the perimeter. The soccer game is taking place down at the far end of the field, and when Miley gets there she sees there isn't anyone else watching, just the players and small piles of their stuff off to one side. So there's really only one thing to do. Miley drops her bookbag next to Lilly's and immediately starts yelling at the top of her lungs.

"Go, Lilly!" She cups her hands around her mouth to get more volume. "Go, Lilly's team!" Everyone playing looks over at her, some of them annoyed but most just amused, Lilly's eyes laughing. "Get the ball! Score! Kick those other guys' butts! Wooo!"

One of the other players elbows Lilly and says something to her; Lilly laughs and punches at the girl's shoulder. The game picks up again, and maybe Miley knows absolutely nothing about soccer, but she knows absolutely everything about her best friend and she can tell Lilly's showing off. So she keeps up her screaming and even tries adding in a couple cheerleading moves, but freshman year of high school was a long time ago and she didn't even make the team, so she's not sure how well they go.

Someone's watch beeps after about five minutes and the girl calls halftime, sending everyone streaming over to where Miley is to grab their water bottles. "It's so nice of your girlfriend to join us, Truscott," one of them says.

Lilly grins and slings an arm around Miley's shoulders. "At least I can get mine to show up."

"Ew, gross," Miley says, shoving her away. "You smell disgusting! Do _not_ touch me."

"But, Miley, I just want to give you a hug! I _wuuv_ you!" Lilly reaches out to grab her and Miley shrieks and backs away, running between the other girls when Lilly chases her.

"Get a room, you two!" someone yells.

"We already have two," Lilly shoots back. "Some of us aren't stuck living in a shoebox on campus."

"You're just jealous no one came to cheer for you," Miley says, hands on her hips.

"Yeah, Steph," breaks in one of the other girls. "I'd like to see you get Tommy down here." The rest of the group laughs at that, and Miley smirks.

"I could get him to come if I wanted to," Stephanie insists.

"Prove it," the other girl challenges.

Stephanie pulls out her phone and starts texting. "He'll be here a lot faster than Erik ever would. You couldn't get that boy away from his Wii if a bomb went off. When was the last time you got him to take you on a date?"

The other girl shoots Stephanie the finger and then pulls out her phone, and then everyone's got theirs out, texting and calling, trying to get as many people down to the field as they can. Miley leans towards Lilly. "Where's Oliver when you need him?"

"I think Miami."

"Oh, I can call Evan!" They started going out again at the beginning of the month.

"Tell him to bring friends." Which she does, and then she calls Amber and Ashley and sends out a mass text to all the other Music majors she knows, and the last half of the soccer game gets played in the middle of a screaming throng of people.

"I can't believe you turned my soccer game into a cheerleading death match," Lilly says in the car on the way home.

"I'm just getting you used to the noise level for when you play in the World Bowl," Miley says. She sends a thank you text to Evan. She'd kissed him goodbye, of course, but she feels a little guilty because he came all the way out there and then wanted to get dinner after but she couldn't. It's Thursday.

"World _Cup_, Miley." Miley shrugs, because, seriously, _whatever_, and then Lilly glances at her sideways and says, "So I guess things are still good with you and Evan?"

"Yeah, he's great."

"And it really doesn't bother you at all that he dated someone else this summer?"

Miley rolls her eyes. Lilly's never going to let that go. "No. I told you. We weren't together for the summer."

"But, it's just, after..." Miley shoots her a warning glare and Lilly stops before she names They Who Must Not Be Named. "Just, if you like him, then – "

"I like him. I like him a lot. He's cute and he's funny and we have a good time with each other. But it's not like he's the love of my life. I mean, I'm never going to be telling our kids how we met. He's just...he's just going to be a guy I dated in college, you know?"

Lilly swallows. "Yeah. I know."

She looks a lot sadder about it than Miley would have expected. She hadn't known Lilly liked Evan that much. They're at the apartment then, and Lilly just sits there behind the wheel, so Miley drums her fingers on her knee and says, "So, sushi?"

Lilly blinks. "Right. Sushi. Yeah."

"I'm gonna need you to take a shower first, though, because I don't think I can hold food down when you smell this gross."

"Hang on," Lilly says, leaning towards her, eyes glinting. "I just want to give you one little hug first."

And Miley yelps and bolts from the car and they're both laughing as Lilly chases her up the stairs.

—

**spring**

It's basically inevitable that Miley does a concert at Stanford. Lilly thinks it's nice not to have to go anywhere for one of Miley's concerts for a change, and the best part is that since Oliver's on his way back to L.A. from Seattle, he's going to stop by and open for her. Lilly hasn't seen him since Thanksgiving.

She's swamped with classes and work, so she doesn't really get to help Miley prepare for the concert, but practically everyone else on campus does. Music majors can get class credit for special projects as long as they're approved ahead of time, and this one takes about ten seconds to get approved, so as many as can sign up to do something: background singing, or taking turns playing guitar or drums, or setting up the sound system. Miley's already had practice at getting projects cleared – besides this, she got credit for her last album – and she talks to some of the other departments and persuades them to offer credit, too, so the graphic design kids do all the promotional artwork and the business students handle tickets and all the other financials. The way Miley tells it, the whole entire campus loves her after that, especially the seniors who've been running around freaking out about graduating without having any kind of practical experience.

"Aren't performance Music majors _required_ to have practical experience to graduate?" Lilly asks. "Don't most of them have, like, a ton of it?"

"You're missing the point," Miley tells her.

"Which is?"

"I'm awesome and everybody loves me." Which isn't really what you'd call a surprise twist. That's the point of a lot of Miley's stories.

A week before the concert, Lilly gets an email from her advisor that says, _I think you should consider this_, and when she clicks on the link it takes her to a site for the summer semester abroad in Lyon. He catches her after class the next day and asks if she looked at the information. "I think it would be great for you," he says. "Your French is really blossoming, and this would give you the chance to fully immerse yourself in the language. And all of the credits transfer."

"It looked wonderful," Lilly says. "But I can't. I already have a commitment this summer." Neither of them has never said anything outright, but they have a tacit understanding that while the school year belongs to Lilly, summers are Miley's. This year it's a movie that's filming down in Tennessee. _Best of Both Worlds_ is supposed to be semi-autobiographical, based on Miley's experiences as Hannah, but Lilly's read the script and nothing in it ever really happened. She's been told that's not an issue, though, since the studio is only claiming it was 'inspired by true events.'

"I understand," her advisor says. "You know, they offer the program again in the fall. You should think about it."

Lilly promises she will even as she knows she'll never do it. Miley's here because of her, how can Lilly ditch her to go study in another country for three months? She calls Joannie on her way back to the dorm. Besides Oliver, and Amber and Ashley, and of course Miley, Joannie's really the only one from high school Lilly's kept up with more than being facebook friends.

"Yo," Joannie answers. "What's up?"

"Just blew off my advisor. You?"

"Soccer practice in twenty minutes. What's the deal with your advisor?"

Lilly makes a noise. "He wanted me to do some study abroad thing in France this summer. He thinks it would take my French to the next level, or something stupid like that."

"He's probably right," Joannie says. "Don't you, like, want to be a French teacher? You could probably use the experience."

"I can't go to France for the summer. Miley's making a movie in Tennessee."

Joannie doesn't say anything.

"Look, I know what you think, but I can't just abandon her." Not after what Miley did, what she's sacrificed so they can have these four years together. It would be too much like a betrayal.

"You can, you just won't."

"Fine. I won't. I'm not going to do that to her. And I don't even want to go to France." They only have a year left. That's it. One year. She can't miss three months of it.

"Sure. That's why you called and told me about it as soon as you found out. Face it, if it wasn't for Miley you would've already signed up."

"Come on, Joannie, she's my best friend. And she's given up a lot more than a semester abroad so we could go to school together."

"Yeah, exactly," Joannie says. "Friends are one thing. But the person you rearrange your life for? The one you're willing to move to a different continent for or put your career on hold? That's not a friendship. That's a marriage."

Joannie always says the most ridiculous things.

Oliver comes into town the night before the concert, and one of the advantages of having an apartment is that Miley doesn't have to crash with Amber and Ashley again. "I wish you could stay longer," Lilly tells him, after.

"I know, me too," he says. "But the tour's going so well right now. We're making enough money that I should be able to do another album next year."

The concert's on a Saturday night and it's been sold out for weeks. Amber's doing something to help out, but Lilly hangs out backstage with Ashley. "My boyfriend's coming later," she squeals, sounding more excited about that than the concert.

"Is this the rich one that's going to be a neurosurgeon?" Lilly asks, pretending not to know. Ashley hasn't talked about anything else since they started going out back in September.

Ashley doesn't pick up on Lilly's mockery. "Yes!" she exclaims. "I think he's going to propose soon."

"Don't you think that's kind of fast?" Lilly asks, but Ashley's not paying attention to her anymore. She's gotten distracting watching the stage. Oliver's on his last song and Miley's joined him for it.

"Do you ever worry about them?" Ashley asks while onstage Miley winds an arm around the back of Oliver's neck and slides the entire front of her body up his.

"Miley and Oliver?" The idea of it makes her laugh. And even if it didn't, neither one of them would ever do that to her. "No."

Onstage, Miley and Oliver's foreheads are pressed together and they're staring into each other's eyes looking for all the world like they're about ten seconds away from shoving their tongues down each other's throats and hands down each other's pants. "I'd worry about them if I were you."

Lilly rolls her eyes. "Well, you aren't." Thank god. She spends a few seconds imagining what it would be like to go through life with Ashley's brain. It's not a pleasant thought.

"I always did think you were a cute couple, though."

"Who?" Lilly asks, distracted, eyes following Miley as she spins away from Oliver and runs to the other side of the stage. She's seen Miley perform how many times? It must be hundreds by now. But there's something so addicting about it. Lilly can never take her eyes off her.

Ashley gives her a weird look. "You and Oliver?" The song's over by then and Oliver swoops over and gives her a sweaty hug and breathless kiss. "What did you think?"

"You were awesome." They watch the beginning of Miley's set and then go backstage so Oliver can get a drink and change his shirt. There's people running around, in and out and through the area, so the three of them crash on some rickety folding chairs Lilly finds leaning up against the back wall. They watch the people scurry around and Oliver downs a whole bottle of water and wipes his face and neck with a towel that one of the crew tossed to him on their way backstage, along with a "Nice set."

Oliver goes to find his other shirt and Lilly starts counting down from ten to see how long it will take Ashley to bring up her boyfriend again.

"I can't wait for my boyfriend to get here," Ashley says. Lilly's only on seven. "Did I tell you he's going to propose soon? I told him I want at least twenty carats in the ring."

"Don't you think this is a little fast to be getting engaged?" Lilly asks again, wondering why everyone is so obsessed with marriage lately. They aren't even out of college yet. "You only started dating a few months ago."

"Six months," Ashley corrects. "And not everyone is as slow as you and Oliver." But everyone expects she and Oliver will get married. Lilly's mother keeps trying to get her to set a date, her dad keeps trying to get her to promise the wedding will be in Malibu, and last night before Oliver got here, Miley was running around the apartment making kissing noises and singing, "Lilly and Oliver, sitting in a tree..."

Probably even Oliver thinks they will, even though he's never once brought it up. She could just let it happen, Lilly realizes. She could just let everyone be right. Why shouldn't they be? Oliver loves her, and Lilly loves him.

"Besides," Ashley continues. "He's already rich and he's going to be a neurosurgeon. Do you know how much money he's going to make? A _lot_."

"Ashley! You can't just marry him because he's going to make a lot of money."

"Why not?"

"You're supposed to marry someone because you love them. Because they're the one person in the whole world you love so much you can't imagine living without them."

Ashley surprises her by laughing. Lilly hadn't thought she'd said anything funny. "Please, we're not twelve. You can't tell me you still believe in that soulmate crap. I know you love Oliver, but even you have to admit that kind of stuff doesn't really exist."

Yes, it does. Lilly knows it does.

Oliver comes back before she can protest to Ashley and they all sit for a while listening to Oliver's latest tour stories and his plans for the next album. He says he's already got most of the songs written for it, it's just a matter of coming up with the money to get it recorded.

Lilly's just about to suggest that they go back and watch the rest of the concert when another guy enters the room and Ashley makes a high, excited noise and runs over to fling herself on him. The two of them start trying to swallow each other's tongues and Lilly hides her face against Oliver's shoulder. "Why do people think it's okay to do that in public?"

"Aw, come on, don't you remember when we used to be like that?" Oliver says.

"We were never like _that_," Lilly insists.

Ashley drags the guy over to them. He grabs a nearby chair and drops into it and Ashley immediately sits in his lap. "This is Yates," she announces. Lilly knew there was some reason she never remembered his name. To him, Ashley says, "I've told you about Lilly. Oliver's her boyfriend. We all went to high school together."

"Hey," Yates says. His light brown hair is curly and a little too long, and he looks just about how you'd expect a rich guy named Yates to look. "Nice to meet some of Ashley's friends from back then."

Oliver laughs, not very kindly. "We weren't exactly friends in high school." Yates's forehead wrinkles and Lilly elbows Oliver in the side.

"Yates is going to be a neurosurgeon," Ashley tells Oliver. Lilly's starting to think it's the only thing Ashley knows about him. Certainly the only thing she cares about. It makes Lilly sick to her stomach. How can Ashley mean to marry someone when she cares more for the money he's going to make than the person he is?

"Hey, baby, can you get me something to drink?" Yates asks, and Ashley leans down and gives him another lingering kiss before she slides off his lap and saunters off. Lilly and Oliver and Yates all look at each other. Then they look around the room for as long as possible. Oliver raises his eyebrows at Lilly and jerks his head a little towards Yates, like Lilly has any idea what to say to him.

"So," she says finally. "I guess you and Ashley are pretty serious?"

Yates shrugs. "She wants to get married in August. I was gonna go get a ring yesterday, but then there was this party I wanted to go to. So I guess I'll go next week." How romantic.

But Ashley's relationship is none of her business. Even if Lilly thinks Ashley is making a big mistake and even though she doesn't know Yates at all and still feels kind of bad for him, marrying someone who doesn't really love him.

"That's cool," Oliver is saying. "Congratulations, man."

"So you must really love her," Lilly says, probably with more accusation than she should, if the glare Oliver shoots her is any indication.

But Yates doesn't get offended. He just shrugs again and says, "Yeah, I guess. Plus she's really hot."

Lilly opens her mouth but Oliver kicks her ankle before she can say anything. Then Ashley's back with a bottle of water, sliding onto Yates's lap again and rubbing her nose against his. Lilly shuts her eyes so she doesn't have to see it, leans her head back against the wall. They can hear the music from the concert faintly here. Lilly hadn't noticed it before, but she concentrates on it now and Miley dances across the inside of her eyelids. She doesn't understand how anyone can do what Ashley and Yates are doing.

She says as much to Oliver, later, when they're walking to the car to go the party. Miley's ahead of them with Evan and Amber and Amber's boyfriend. Ashley and Yates are somewhere behind them in the crowd, which is making so much noise Lilly doesn't worry about them or anyone else hearing what she says.

Oliver laughs. "Come on, Lilly, people get married for all kinds of reasons. And it's Ashley. Are you really surprised she's marrying for money?"

He's the second person tonight to laugh at her and she doesn't like it. "But it's just...they're _using_ each other."

Oliver shrugs. Lilly doesn't like that either. It reminds her of Yates. "I think they both know what they're doing."

So maybe Ashley's right, maybe Lilly's acting like some little kid, thinking there has to be some huge romance, a love so big it pushes out everything else. Maybe Oliver's right, maybe people get married because they're comfortable with each other, or for security, or because that's just what you're supposed to do. "What about you? Would you do something like that?"

"No way." He puts his arm around her shoulders and hugs her against his side. The night is warm and his body feels too hot in it, and he smells strongly of dried sweat when what she wants is fresh air to clear her head. "Lilly, you and I are not like Ashley and Yates."

She thinks that's supposed to make her feel better, but it doesn't

—

Miley doesn't have any rituals. She always calls her dad the day after, and Jackson. She and Jackson don't talk that much as a rule, they usually just let their dad keep them updated about the other's life, but she always calls him the day after, or he calls her. It's the one conversation they have a year where they're guaranteed not to mock or tease or mock and tease. They just talk. Checking in, making sure the other's all right. It's always the day after, though, never the day itself, like somehow they couldn't bear that, like somehow they all need space just to get through it. Miley isn't sure why that is. They were together when it happened.

So she doesn't have any rituals on the day. She guesses other people do. Flowers, maybe, or lighting a candle in a church, but neither of those have ever felt right to her, and she's in California, so it's not like –

It's not like she can visit the grave.

They do, sometimes, when they're in Tennessee, and she _could_. She can afford plane tickets. But flying out there every year, trekking to the cemetery? Her Mama would've thought that was silly. Her Mama would've laughed at it. She would've wrapped her arms around Miley and kissed her forehead and said, "Don't you remember, sweetpea? You don't have to go anywhere to find me. I'm right here in your heart. Always."

So instead Miley just kind of goes off by herself. In Malibu, she'd head up the beach until there was no one else around, and after they moved she saddled Blue Jeans and rode out along the edges of the property, remembering. Maybe that's what they all needed space for. The memories.

Here there's a park right next to campus that has some hiking trails. Miley doesn't skip class or anything. But after she walks one of the trails until she hasn't seen anyone for a while, and then she finds one of the benches scattered off to the sides of the trail and sits looking at the thin, still woods around her. The park closes at dusk, but she doesn't want to spend all day anyway. She just wants to lose herself for a couple hours.

It's gorgeous out, and Miley has always hated beauty on this day, but this is the kind of weather her mother liked best. The day after she'd died had dawned brilliantly cool and clear, fresh spring air coming in through the windows Mamaw had opened while the three of them sat around the breakfast table filled with food Mamaw made and the neighbors brought. None of them had slept and none of them were eating, sitting propped like dolls in their chairs and listening to the birds singing and the sounds of Mamaw washing dishes in the kitchen.

Miley didn't know how long they sat there before her dad spoke. "Your mother would have loved today," he said, and his voice seemed an impossible thing. It had jerked her limbs into motion and she had gone from her chair to sit in his lap the way she used to when she was young. Jackson had come to stand next to them, very close, and they had all held each other while the food went cold.

_You don't have to go anywhere to find me. I'm right here in your heart_. Her mom used to say that all the time, that she was in Miley's heart. She said it right before she died, and afterwards it made Miley angry, so angry her body couldn't hold all of it. Two days after, her dad was at the funeral home and she tore her room apart, knocking things from her desk and ripping them from the walls, tearing the covers from her bed and clothes from her closet, screaming her rage out while hot tears blurred everything into splotches. She didn't want her mother in her heart. What good was that? She wanted her here, in the world, with her.

She fell asleep sobbing on the bare mattress she'd dragged to the floor and didn't wake until the next morning when her father knocked on the bedroom door. She didn't answer and he came in while she struggled to push herself up on shaky elbows. Her eyes felt swollen and her face was tight with dried tears. Normally he would have yelled at her for making such a mess, ruining her things, but he only looked around the room once, head turning slowly, and then he set about trying to right it.

She hated him so much in that moment, all of her rage flaring back up. How could he do that? How could he go around trying to put things back to the way they'd been before when her mother was dead? She glared her hate at him, wanting to scream, but he only kept on, picking things up from the floor and setting them on the desk and dresser. He started in on the clothes, stooping down for a shirt and methodically placing it on a hanger, bending down to do it again and again.

His shoulders were bent inward like something heavy sat on them, and she could see grief sharp on the planes of his face, a pain that turned his eyes into blanks. He looked so much smaller than she had ever seen him. It punctured her anger and suddenly she couldn't let him clean up her mess alone. She drew in a breath and got up, picked a lamp up from the floor, set her desk chair back on its legs.

When they finished, they sat on the mattress they'd hauled up onto the box spring together. Miley leaned against him and put an arm around his waist and he put one of his around her shoulders. "We picked out a casket," he said. She thought that was a horrible word, a horrible thing to say to her. "The funeral will be the day after tomorrow."

He'd hung her clothes up all wrong. The shade on the lamp was torn, the stereo smashed, posters shredded, her sheets and blankets piled in a tangle on the foot of the bed. The rest of her possessions were scattered haphazardly across the surfaces of the desk and dresser. Nothing was back to the way it had been, and it never would be again.

Miley puts her elbows on her knees, covers her face with her hands and breathes in and out a few times before sitting back. Usually she tries not to think of these things. She tries to think of good ones, all of the wonderful times she had with her mother. And usually she succeeds. But this day every year, when she's alone, it is so much harder to remember her mother instead of her death.

After it happened, Miley had thought life was over. That she would never be happy again. That wasn't true, of course. She remembers the first time she laughed after, remembers the guilt and shame that twisted her to knots that night in her bed, biting hard on the palm of her hand to keep from going mad with it. Her mother was dead. How could she have laughed? How could she have thought something was _funny_?

But it happened again, and then again, life rushing forward with no regard for the great, gaping hole that had opened in the middle of it. It carried them along whether they wanted it to or not, and if that hole was never filled, eventually the jagged, tearing edges of it were filed down so that they no longer cut themselves when they came upon it. She was happy again sooner than she would have thought, and there was Hannah and Malibu and high school, and now she is here.

She wonders what her mother would have thought of her, of the person she is now. Miley knows she would have been proud. But knowing that was not the same as seeing it on her face, hearing her say it. Having her mother in her heart is not the same as having her in the world.

There are footsteps on the trail. She tilts her head away from them, hopes that maybe the person won't see her sitting there, or won't recognize her, or will guess from the fact that she's sitting alone in the middle of nowhere that she doesn't want to be bothered. But then it's Lilly, so none of that really applies.

Miley stares at her. Then she stares at her some more.

"Hey," Lilly says.

"W-what are you doing here?" Miley manages. It's so unexpected it's like seeing a ghost, and she doesn't need another ghost. Not today.

"Looking for you."

"How did you find me?"

"I've been looking a while," Lilly says, and she's sweaty and a little out of breath, so Miley thinks she must have been. She comes and sits next to Miley on the bench. Miley glances at her out of the corner of her eye, then looks away. What is Lilly doing here?

"How did you know I...?"

"You always do this." So maybe Miley does have rituals. "You always take off, and I never – " Lilly takes a breath, clears her throat. Miley keeps her eyes on the grass around their feet. "I never know if it's because you want to be by yourself, or if you think you should be."

Lilly waits like she's expecting Miley to say something, but Miley doesn't. She would, but she doesn't know herself why she does this. It's just something she does. She isn't sure if it's because it's something she needs or something she convinced herself she needed because her father does.

"So," Lilly says when it becomes obvious Miley isn't going to say anything. She clears her throat again. "Do you want to be alone?"

"Yeah," Miley says, then half-raises a hand when Lilly nods and starts to stand. "But you can stay." Lilly settles back on the bench. They sit silent for a minute, Miley looking at her sideways again. "I wish she could have met you."

Her mom would have loved Lilly. That's not hard to figure out. She used to tell Miley the story about how she took Miley's dad home to meet her parents for the first time, about how he was so nervous he kept dropping things at the dinner table and spitting out words wrong, and halfway through Miley's grandma leaned over and whispered in her mother's ear, _Make sure you keep that one around_. Miley thinks her mom would've spent five minutes with Lilly and then told Miley that exact same thing.

_Make sure you keep that one around_.

"Me too," Lilly says. "Will you tell me about her?"

Lilly knows the facts about her mother. She knows her name, the color of her eyes, how she died. But she doesn't know that her hair always smelled like rain or that she used to make banana pancakes on Christmas morning or that she was the one who taught Miley how to ride. So Miley tells her, and once she starts talking it's hard to stop, memories spilling out of her, things she hasn't talked about in years.

She keeps going until the sky stains itself orange. Half of her mind is on the cake her mother made for her fifth birthday party, the one in the shape of a pony, but the other part sees the color and thinks, _the park closes at dark_. She stands up right in the middle of her story and Lilly looks up at her in surprise, mouth open.

Miley stops talking and looks down at her, just as amazed, because the sun is setting and her heart is light, racing like it could take to the air. She can't remember ever being happy on this day, she has always tried simply to survive it, and if she isn't happy now, she isn't weighed down with grief, either. For one long minute she doesn't know how to feel about that, if she should be angry with Lilly for doing this, because she isn't sure she wants this day to stop hurting.

Then she wonders what her dad and Jackson are doing right now, what they are feeling. She wonders if they have all been losing themselves year after year because they needed to be alone or because they needed to see if someone would come find them. And then she puts a hand down, offering it to Lilly.

"We have to go," Miley says. "The park is closing."

"Okay," Lilly says, taking Miley's hand, pulling herself up. "We can get something to eat if you're hungry."

"Okay." She is hungry, and they Lilly leave the park, eat quickly. After they get back to the apartment, Lilly goes upstairs and Miley stays in the car, dials her phone. She doesn't want to wait until tomorrow. She calls her father first, and when he answers, voice rough, she says, "Mama would have loved today."

—

**summer**

Tennessee's sweltering and they're mostly on location, which means outside. It's not much better in the studio, where the air conditioning is counteracted by the 18,000-watt lights. The first week of shooting, Mr. Stewart keeps having to leave because he's setting up some promotional stuff Miley's going to have to do later, so Lilly ends up doing a lot of the stuff he normally would while on set. Which is fine, because she's there anyway.

There's a lot to do, though, with taking calls from Miley's agent to try to work out her schedule after shooting ends, and sifting through all the press offers that come in. There's a lot of local stations that want her while she's in town, and at first Lilly tries asking Miley's dad about them, but he tells her he's working on something else and whatever she thinks will probably be fine. And this is sort of the same thing she helped out with during the tour after freshman year, so she does have some experience.

She works it out with the AD to push Miley's call time back a few hours on days when they know the lighting's going to take at least that long to set up, and books her a couple interviews the second and third weeks they're there, figuring interest will slack a little after that. It does, and then she turns down everything except print press that's willing to come out to set.

But that turns out to just be the beginning. She also ends up keeping track of Miley's sides and helping her rehearse, vetting the promo pics the still photographer is constantly snapping and making sure they both have cash for five-dollar Fridays, and arguing with the script girl over whether Miley's completely unnecessary scarf was thrown over her left shoulder or her right in the last take. Plus getting the call sheet at the end of the day and making sure transportation's set up for the next morning, and running out to get breakfast for them to eat in the car on the days they're supposed to report having had. In the beginning, she always lets Miley's dad know their pick-up time, but after the second straight week of him being a no-show she figures why bother? He keeps saying he's going to stop by the set during the afternoons, but he never does, and really, both she and Miley are too busy and having too much fun to notice much how he's gone.

And of course she's acting as Miley's liaison with the rest of the crew. Not the director or anything, but if there's a problem with the schedule, or a tech issue that means they aren't calling Miley for another hour, or someone has to figure out what to do with the crapload of fan gifts that keep getting left at the security checkpoints on location, they come to Lilly. She's kind of used to dealing with things like that anyway, after helping Miley and Oliver last summer, although it turns out that there's like a million more things that can go wrong on a movie set than in a recording studio.

One day everything does, and the scene they're shooting isn't even a difficult one, and it's not even a whole scene, but for some reason Miley just can't get it, and the few times she does there's always some kind of screw up with the lighting or camera work. The shot list goes to hell before lunch and Miley's in a foul mood during it and after it just gets worse. They get a couple shots but it's like herding cats and there's no way they're going to make the day. Lilly also knows there's no way they'll go into golden time on a day like today, and when the AD calls the window at six o'clock Lilly sighs in relief and heads back to the trailer to pack up their stuff.

She's still there waiting half an hour later, and she sticks her head outside and flags down a passing grip to ask what the hold up is.

"It's...they're having some trouble with the shot."

"Lights?" Lilly asks. "Camera?"

He shakes his head. "They finally got the kinks out of those. It's Ms. Stewart, they've done ten takes, but..."

Lilly rubs at her forehead. She's had plenty enough of this day and their pick-up time tomorrow is 6:30. "All right. Here's what I want you to do. You go over there and tell her I said to quit messing around and get the shot. I'm hungry and I'd like to get dinner some time tonight."

He stares at her like she's grown another head.

"Go!" No way is she walking all the way over there again or she'd do it herself. "And tell her I said do it on the next take!" she calls after him.

Three minutes later, Miley blows into the trailer and says, "Thank god, I am so ready to get out of here." They go back to the apartment and get Miley's dad and he takes them out for some really good barbecue, and by the next morning the story's spread across the set, because everything spreads on a movie set, and after that the crew starts looking at Lilly's like she's some kind of god.

It's pretty funny, and a couple times after that she gets people, even the director once, coming up to her so they can go back to Miley and say, "Lilly said..."

All of which is fine until the day she happens to wander onto set to check on Miley and overhears two of the PAs telling Miley that Lilly said she would do an interview during lunch for one of their cousins' blogs. Which Lilly never even came _close_ to saying.

Miley's frowning and agreeing in the absent sort of way that tells Lilly she isn't really listening because she's so locked in to the scene they're shooting next. It's a difficult one, and Lilly's so angry she wants to march over there and rip those guys to shreds, but she's not going to let their idiocy screw up Miley's focus.

So she waits until they walk away from Miley, grabs both of them, and instructs them to come with her. Three years ago, she would have been running for Miley or Mr. Stewart to see what to do, but she doesn't even think of that now. She just hauls them in front of the AD and explains the situation.

"What do you want me to do?" he asks, and she doesn't even hesitate, because there isn't a chance in hell she'll ever let anyone use their relationship to manipulate Miley.

"I'm not working with them," she says as flatly as she can when she's almost shaking with rage. "And neither is Miley."

At dinner that night, she pushes food around on her plate without really eating anything. It's late but it's summer and there's still light in the sky, enough that they eat on the deck out back. The apartment complex is gated, so they don't have to worry too much about paparazzi. Lilly's mostly quiet while Mr. Stewart asks Miley how shooting went and she tells him about how the DP and most of the second team ending up covered in mud after Miley's stand-in slipped in a puddle and took the rest of them down with her.

Then she says, "Something weird happened, too. Chuck came up to me after lunch and apologized for something to do with a couple of the PAs." Chuck is the assistant director. Miley's looking at Lilly a little, clearly wanting to see if Lilly knows anything about this, so Lilly straightens in her chair and puts her fork down and tells them how she'd heard the PAs lying to Miley.

"So what did you do?" Miley's dad asks, and Lilly doesn't want to say. She wants to put it off on Chuck, say it was his decision. But if she does, if she hides behind Chuck's name, doesn't that make her just like those men?

So she swallows and lifts her chin and says, "I had them fired."

"Good," Miley says right away, taking a giant bite of steak and talking through it. "Because there's no way I'd work with them after that."

Mr. Stewart nods. "That's exactly what I would have done, Lilly."

Later Miley goes inside to take a bath and Lilly carries plates in while Mr. Stewart cleans the grill. Once the table's clear, Lilly sits back down. It's almost dark now, and she watches the last of the light disappear.

Miley's dad pulls the cover over the grill, tugging until it slides into place. "You okay?" he asks.

Lilly shrugs. "I got two people fired."

He sits down across from her at the table. "If it helps, they probably would have gotten fired anyway. Chuck's not stupid, and neither is Raul." Raul is the director. "They aren't going to tolerate anyone pulling that kind of crud on their project. But it was your right to demand it, and you were right to do so."

"Still." She got two people fired. And all they'd wanted was for Miley to do some stupid interview for some stupid blog. Miley probably would have done it, even, if they'd just asked her.

"I know. It's a hard thing."

But it wasn't. That's what makes it so awful. It was easy. And maybe she feels guilty now, but at the time there hadn't been any guilt at all, only her anger transmuting into a feral kind of satisfaction. Lilly hadn't known she had anything like that inside her, and she wishes she didn't still.

"I've never gotten anyone fired before," she says. "I never had to do something like that."

"Would you do it again?"

In a second. "Yes."

He nods like he knew that would be her answer. "Then that's how you live with it."

—

Miley hasn't had a summer off since she turned twelve, not like most people think of them. She's always loved summers best, though, and thought of them as vacations even though they were filled with concerts and recording sessions and tours. It's always been a relief to be able to set aside all the things she was supposed to be doing and go full speed after the things she wanted instead.

And this summer is one of her favorites, because they're in Tennessee and she's shooting a movie – a movie _based on her life_ – and every day she and Lilly get to hang out on the set while the lights are being placed and every night her dad's there to supply them with free food.

The movie's going well, though they're right on the edge of being behind schedule. They _aren't_, but one bad day would be enough to set them back, and the pressure not to let that happen is starting to make everyone twitchy. There's only a couple weeks left of shooting, and going over means going overbudget, way overbudget. Miley's not supposed to be bothered with petty little details like the exact dollar figure, but the crew talks around Lilly and Lilly talks to her.

Everyone's running around like their pants are on fire to make sure things go smoothly, so of course when the bad day happens it's all Miley's fault. It's just this one scene she can't get. They're stuck on the same three-eighths of a page all morning and still haven't made any progress when they break for lunch. Usually she eats with the rest of the cast but today she goes back to her trailer and lies down, lets Lilly go through the line and bring food over.

"We'll get it after lunch," Raul had said right after Chuck called it, and Miley wants to prove him right. She's supposed to be losing something in this scene. A boy. He's supposed to symbolize everything she lost being Hannah, all the things she sacrificed for the sake of her double life. As usual, Hollywood is insisting on making things seem more difficult and dramatic than they ever really were. When Miley looks back at being Hannah, she can only ever see what she gained, the things Hannah gave her the freedom to do and space to become.

And it's not like Miley hasn't lost things. But they're either not enough or too much, not important or something she can't bear to see put up on a screen. She can't find the piece of herself she needs to make this scene work.

"Do you want to try and run it with me?" Lilly asks after they've eaten a silent lunch, and Miley shakes her head. At this point, it's too late, she can feel it. She's blocked.

She's blocked and she's going to stay blocked and they're never going to get the shot. It's their last day at this location, and even if they push it back and stay an extra day, today's clear and sunny and tomorrow's going to be overcast and the lighting will have to be redone, all for a stupid pickup because she can't get the damn shot.

It's immediately obvious that the lunch break didn't help. They do five more takes, then ten, and Raul keeps talking to her, telling her to just relax and let it come to her, but there isn't anything there to come.

"Just give me a minute," she says after Raul calls cut – and nothing else – on the next take, and everyone kind of slumps and wanders a little but doesn't go far because they only have a minute, and really not even that.

Lilly comes over and brings her water. "I don't think I can do this," Miley says, quietly so no one else will hear.

"Yes, you can," Lilly says, sad and smiling. "I've seen you." She puts a hand on Miley's shoulder, leans in and whispers in her ear. "Just pretend you're in an airport, getting on a plane to Paris."

"That's it!" Raul calls. "Hold it just like that, Miley! We're going again, everyone!"

"Clear frame!" Chuck hollers, and everyone snaps to attention and Lilly's backing away and Miley knows she's supposed to be remembering three years ago. But she's not, because it suddenly hits her that there's an airport a lot closer to her in time than that one. There's the airport that's coming a year from now, not even a year, the one they'll be in when college ends. Miley can't believe she hasn't thought of this before, that she didn't realize the best four years of their lives are almost over, that soon she'll be right back where she was that day, getting on a plane and leaving Lilly behind.

But that's what she's thinking now, thinking it while the camera rolls and she says her lines and Raul yells _Cut! Print! Moving on! _and the crew erupts in whistles and cheers.

—


	4. Four

**Uh, I meant to put up explanations yesterday of the set slang I used in the last chapter, but then it was late and I chose sleep instead. I'm trying to remember what I used now, and I think most of it might be clear enough in context, except maybe the window, which is just slang for the last shot of the day. Anyway, if there's anything else that doesn't make sense, let me know and I will explain!**

—

**4**

**fall**

The best thing about having an apartment instead of living in the dorms is that you don't have to move out in May and back in September. Well, that and the fact that they don't have to fit themselves and all of their possessions into a space the size of a matchbox.

"How are we seniors already?" Lilly asks their first night back. "I can't believe we're seniors already."

"I know," Miley says. "Are you sure it's really been three years?" It had seemed like a much longer time when they were at the beginning. "Maybe there was a time warp or something."

"We're going to graduate in a year. Oh my god. We're going to graduate in a year! I'm going to have to find a job! I don't even have a resume! No one's going to hire me!"

"Calm down, Lilly. You'll find a job. Everyone's going to want to hire you. And if you don't get a job, we could always stay an extra year."

Lilly looks like she's actually considering it for a minute, then shakes her head. "No, we can't. Your dad's already lining things up for you, and I can't take out any more loans. Besides, I'm kind of ready to be done with school."

Oh yeah, school. "Me too." Miley's more than ready to be done with that. It's the rest of it she isn't. "Hey, you're going to look for jobs in L.A., right?"

Lilly looks at her strangely. "Of course."

"Okay. Good. I just...I didn't know if you were going to look around Atlanta or something, but this way we'll be able to see each other all the time when I'm in town, and we'll hang out and go to Traci's parties and get sushi and it'll be great."

"Yeah, it'll be great," Lilly says, and she smiles but it falters. Miley pretends she didn't see it.

"You know what? We should get a house! That way we could live together!"

"Miley. Haven't you been listening? I can't afford to get a house. I'm going to be in debt and I haven't even thought about applying anywhere yet."

"So I'll buy it. Come on, it'll be awesome."

"I don't know," Lilly says doubtfully. "Maybe. I might not even be in L.A."

"You just said you were going to look there!"

"That doesn't mean I'll find something."

"You have to. Otherwise we'll never see each other. And come on, there's gotta be plenty of jobs in L.A. It's huge. Just – just promise me you'll check everywhere there before you look anywhere else. I can help you, I can – "

"Okay, all right," Lilly says. "Now who needs to calm down?"

Miley takes a breath. She hadn't realized she was getting upset. But the idea of seeing Lilly, what? Maybe once or twice a year at holidays? She can't – it's her and Lilly. "Sorry."

"It's okay. But we shouldn't be worrying about any of this yet anyway. We still have a whole year of school left to get through first, right?"

"Yeah." They still have a whole year. Miley tells herself to appreciate that, every day of this term and the next, to not let the months slip by like they have for the past three years, but somehow they do anyway. Miley spends a lot of time on the phone, hammering down what's going to happen when, and she has to drive back to Malibu four weekends straight to do promotion for the movie, and then again for the premiere when it actually comes out. It's crazy the movie got pushed through post so fast, but the studio wanted it out in time for the Christmas season.

She's still dating Evan, but he starts getting a little annoyed at all the stuff she has to do. It probably doesn't help that she keeps making dates with him but then has to raincheck them because something comes up in her other life. Sometimes it still seems like she has two, even though she hasn't put on a wig in three and a half years.

They end up deciding to dial things back and keep them even more casual than they already were, and Miley doesn't see him for about a month. She's a little surprised at how sad it makes her. Evan's the first normal guy she's dated for any length of time, one who's not in the business. She likes that about him, but it's frustrating how he doesn't seem to understand how much time her career takes up.

What she really needs is a normal person who also really gets the pressures of the business, who has patience with its demands. But where's she going to find someone like that?

Anyway, that's why she takes Lilly to the premiere instead of Evan. Lilly has a really important French final the Monday after, but she says as long as Miley drives both ways she should have enough time to study in the car and after the premiere in Malibu. And Lilly's probably a better date, because she's able to check Miley's dress and make sure it's on correctly and isn't going to suddenly come undone and leave Miley half-naked on the red carpet. It's the kind of dress where you worry about that, so that's a really important job. Plus, by now Lilly's really good at standing there while Miley talks to the reporters. She even manages to look gorgeous doing it, and not at all bored, even though Miley knows she must be.

"Thanks for coming," Miley says on the drive back to Stanford. "I know you really need to study."

"Hey, this movie was about me too," Lilly says. "Even if I did only get like five minutes of screentime and the rest was taken up by some boy you'd just met."

Miley laughs. "Only in the movie. In real life, it's all about you and the boy only shows up for a couple minutes so we can make out."

Lilly should laugh at that, or hmph and make some comment about being glad Miley has her priorities straight, but instead she gives Miley a long look and then shakes her head and says, "Don't you think it shouldn't – never mind."

"What?"

Lilly shakes her head again. "Nothing. Never mind. I have to study."

"Right. Study," Miley says, and they went to the premiere and they're on their way back to Stanford and she doesn't know what she was worried about. If there's anyone who knows how to walk the line between having time for Hollywood and time for themselves, it's her and Lilly. They'll still be able to do it after college. She'll talk Lilly into the house thing and they'll see each other all the time and everything will be fine.

She tells herself that the whole way back and by the time they get there she almost believes it.

—

It's Christmas break and that means there's only one term left until they graduate. Lilly knows if she doesn't do it now, she never will. She thinks seriously about never.

The three of them go out for dinner a week before Christmas, for old times' sake. That's how it feels to Lilly, like now is already the past, like this is something they'll do again in ten years and call a reunion.

"I can't believe you guys are graduating college in May," Oliver says, dipping bread into the small plate of olive oil and vinegar.

"I can't believe you make enough money playing music you didn't have to go," Miley says, and Oliver laughs and tells her to shut up. Miley sticks her tongue out and then leans back, sitting loose in her chair. The overhead lights in the restaurant are low, tiny candles flicker on each table, and Lilly stares at the gold lines of light that mark the edges of Miley's arms. She shines. She's supposed to, isn't she? She's a star.

"But I know," Miley is saying. "It seems like high school took ten times longer than college. I'd swear we were freshmen last year."

"Hey, when you get back from Europe, we should totally do a tour together." He and Miley start debating how much crossover there is between his fans and hers and Lilly looks down at the spotless white tablecloth. Miley's a star and Oliver's a star and Lilly is Lilly, and she wonders if, in ten years, she'll even be invited to the reunion.

No. No. They're stronger than that. She and Miley will always be best friends. Even if they don't get to see each other all the time, even if Miley's off living her life and Lilly is off living hers, they'll still talk. They'll still be close. And she and Oliver...they'll be friends. Something. They've known each other too long, loved each other too long, to be nothing.

"I'm telling you, there are tons of screaming girls at my concerts, too," Oliver says. "They're always throwing themselves at me." He shoots a nervous glance at Lilly. "But, uh, they never get anywhere, of course."

"What?" Lilly says. She wasn't really paying attention.

"Oliver was just trying to make us believe hordes of women find him attractive," Miley says. "But I think we both know that's not true."

Lilly replays Oliver's words in her mind and guilt slithers up her back. Oliver is so good. He's out being a rock star and never once has she worried about him being faithful. She's kept him from even looking at other girls. And maybe one of them he could have loved. She has to do this.

Christmas is wonderful. Lilly has four of them. She's with her dad on Christmas Eve, and her mom flies out from Atlanta and picks her up early in the morning and they have breakfast in the hotel restaurant and then go up to her room to do presents. Miley isn't even up when Lilly gets back home. Lilly has to jump on top of her for five minutes to get her out of bed.

"Jackson and Sienna are already here," Lilly says finally, draped across her. "We're going to open presents without you."

"All I want for Christmas is not to be crushed to death by a crazy blonde woman," Miley says, so Lilly bounces up and down some more until Miley hits her in the head with a pillow. Lilly laughs and gives her a kiss that lands somewhere between Miley's throat and jaw.

"Come on, let's go," she says, jumping up, her skin hot and her blood flushing from all the movement. Miley stares up at her, breathless and astonished, and then a beat later they're both racing for the house.

In the evening, Jackson and Sienna go to her parents' and Lilly's mom comes over and the rest of them go to Oliver's. Her dad meets them there and they all have Christmas dinner, and after she and Oliver go up to his room to exchange gifts. They've agreed to keep it small this year. He gets her a snow globe from when he was in Chicago on tour. She kisses him and tries not to think about how it could be one of the last times.

"Miley?" Lilly whispers that night after they've gone to bed. Miley doesn't answer, so Lilly gets up and crawls between the covers on Miley's bed and puts her mouth near Miley's ear. "Miley?"

"Hmm?"

"Let's do this every year."

"Of course we will," Miley murmurs, and Lilly knows she should get up and go back to her own bed but instead she falls asleep right there.

She waits until two days before New Year's to do it. Oliver comes to take her to a movie and Lilly tells him they need to talk.

"Okay," he says. "But we're gonna miss the previews."

She takes him into the bedroom and they sit on her bed and then she doesn't know how to start. She doesn't know how to do this. She almost loses her nerve, she almost doesn't do it, because how can she? How can she do this to him?

But she can't not do it. She can't stay with him forever knowing he deserves to be with someone who can give him everything.

"Oliver," she says. She takes his hand and pats it, but stops when she realizes Miley did the same thing when she told Lilly her hamster died. "Oliver, I think we should...we need to...I mean, we're not going to get married, are we?" Wow. Great. She hadn't thought this was going to go well, but she'd been hoping she would do a little better than this.

"What?" Oliver says. "Married? What are you talking about?"

"I think we should break up," Lilly blurts. She hoped she'd do a _lot_ better than this.

Oliver looks like she just hauled off and hit him across the face with a two-by-four. "What?" he croaks. "You're joking, right?"

Lilly shuts her eyes for a second. Oh, god. She can't do this. "Oliver, I – "

"Lilly, I love you."

"I love you, too."

"Then why are you – "

"It's just, I'm graduating soon and I'll be getting a job who knows where and you'll still be touring and recording, and...and we're not getting married, Oliver. You still freak out if anyone even mentions the idea. So you shouldn't be tied down to me. You should be out having fun. You should be looking for the person you do want to marry. And so should I."

"So is this..." Oliver licks his lips. "Is this some kind of ultimatum? We get engaged or we break up?"

"No," Lilly says quickly. "That's not what this is."

"Because I, I'm not there yet, Lilly. But if you give me some time...I mean, I think one day I'll get there. It's just hard, you know? Marriage is so huge."

Lilly doesn't think it would be hard. It would be so easy to marry him. And shouldn't it be the other way around? Shouldn't she be the one to think it would be hard? But she knows it wouldn't be. She thinks of Ashley and Yates. It would be easy like that. Easy like giving in. She swallows. "Oliver," she says. "I don't think I ever will."

"Oh," he says. His voice cracks around the edges. He looks up at her and she can see in his eyes what she's done to him and she hates herself for it. "I didn't – I didn't know that."

"Oliver, I'm sorry."

"No." He shakes his head. His hand clenches on his knee. "That's all right."

Lilly lowers her head and blinks and blinks and blinks to get rid of the tears, swiping surreptitiously at her eyes when that doesn't work. "I love you. I really do."

"Yeah. Just not enough to actually want to be with me."

More than that, she thinks. "I do, I just – "

"I get it, Lilly. And you're right. We should break up. Why waste our time if this isn't going anywhere, right?"

"This wasn't a waste of time," Lilly says softly.

Oliver keeps talking like he didn't hear her. She hopes he did. She hopes he knows how important he is to her. "Is there someone else? Is that it?"

"No. There's no one else."

"You can tell me if there is. I just want to know."

"Oliver, there isn't anyone else. I promise. That's not why I'm doing this."

"Then why, Lilly? Because I don't understand. If you love me, if it's not because there's someone else, if it's not because you want to get married and I don't or I do and you don't, then why do this? Why break up when things are going so well?"

"What if you miss her?" Lilly asks. "The girl you're supposed to marry. What if you meet her but nothing happens because you're still dating me? I mean, you said it yourself, you meet thousands of girls on tour – "

"So this is about the girls on tour?"

"No! I told you what this is about. There's not some kind of ulterior motive."

"Oh, cut the crap, Lilly." He shoots up from the bed and starts pacing around the room. It's a big room, but the way he moves, angry and just on the edge of frantic, makes it seem tiny. "You expect me to believe you want to break up because, what? Someday there might be some other girl out there I'd love more than you? That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard!"

He has it backwards. It's not that he'll love some other girl more than her. It's that some other girl will love him more than she can. "I just want you to be happy. You deserve more than – "

"You don't get to decide that, Lilly!" They've fought before. Argued. But she's never seen him this upset, she's never seen him yell like this. "You don't get to decide what I deserve. _I_ decide that. And maybe I don't care if you think I deserve more than you. Maybe I don't think we should break up just because we might never get married. Maybe I just want to be with my girlfriend, who I love."

Lilly stares at him. He's stopped moving and he's staring back at her, breathing hard. "D-do you?" she asks finally. She doesn't know what she'll do if he says yes.

He crosses his arms over his chest and his jaw gets tight. "I guess you'll never know, since you didn't bother to consult me when you were mapping out the rest of my life without you."

"I'm sorry, I – "

"Save it. It doesn't matter anyway. It's pretty obvious you don't want me."

"That's not – "

"I said, save it. I'm out of here." He's at the door before she collects herself enough to speak.

"Oliver, wait." He goes still, not looking at her, and she wants to call him back. She wants to say she loves him and to forget everything she's said. But she can't forget how he looked at her that first time. She can't forget that, no matter how much she loves him, she's never been able to look at him the same way. So what she says is, "I don't want to lose you."

"What did you think was going to happen?" he says, and then the door slams shut behind him.

Miley looks about as shocked as Oliver had when Lilly tells her. "But it's you and Oliver," she says after Lilly's convinced her that she's the one who broke up with Oliver and not the other way around, so Miley doesn't need to go find her dad's shotgun and have a talk with the boy. "What about Ollie, Junior? And I already picked out the colors for your wedding. I look good in red."

"You never thought we should be together," Lilly says.

"Yeah, but then I got used to it."

So had Lilly.

Traci throws a party on New Year's Eve but Lilly doesn't go. It takes her about an hour and half to persuade Miley that she still should. Mr. Stewart goes out as well, and Lilly's grateful for the solitude. After Miley leaves, Lilly wanders outside down the broad paths that run between the fences of the fields behind the house. She doesn't have a destination in mind, but it isn't really cold and she wants to be outside. To not be sitting in the house.

The night is clear and the air is crisp, the moon so bright Lilly doesn't take a flashlight with her. She walks for a while, burning off energy, and then picks a fence at random and slides her legs over the middle slat, resting her arms on the top one and looking out across the field. Woods start on the other side of it and there's a slight breeze, so Lilly watches the branches toss and tremble. She likes how forgiving the dark is, the way it hides everything's flaws and lets the silver of the moon make you believe there aren't any, that there is only beauty.

She hasn't cried. Miley keeps telling her that she should, that she should let it out. But Lilly doesn't want to let it out. She wants to keep all of it inside of her.

The wind picks up a little and Lilly savors the feel of it on her skin and in her hair. Strands whip up into her face and dance in the air like the tree branches until she gathers them in. Crickets chirrup in the grass and the gentle rush of the breeze fills in the background. It's so nice out here. Peaceful. Lilly understands why Miley missed this, why she wanted it so much she almost moved across the country for it.

She sits there for a long time, shifting back and forth to move around the pain of the fence digging into the backs of her thighs. Even so, her legs start to fall asleep. She should go back to the house. It must be close to midnight by now. But she doesn't want to. Everything out here is so alive. It makes her feel less alone.

Staying with Oliver would have been the easy thing. She knows that. What she can't figure out is, if that's the easy thing, what's the hard one?

The wind gusts and dies, leaving the crickets louder in its absence. "Hey," Lilly hears behind her. She doesn't have to turn around.

"I thought you were at the party."

"I was." Miley props her arms on the fence next to Lilly and leans against it.

"Why'd you come back?"

"It was boring."

Yeah, right. Star-studded parties in Hollywood were notorious for being mind-numbingly dull.

"And it's almost midnight and I heard somewhere that the way you start the year is the way you finish it."

"Great," Lilly says. "So at the end of next year I'll be sitting at home after having just broken up with my boyfriend."

"No," says Miley. "You'll be with me."

Lilly wants that to be true, but she has no idea where either of them will be in a year. She leans over against Miley and sighs a little. "My legs are falling asleep."

"How long have you been sitting up there?"

"A while."

"You should get down."

"I'll probably fall on my face."

"I'll catch you."

Lilly straightens up. Sitting like this, she's a little taller than Miley. "I'll get down in a minute."

"Look." Miley holds up her phone and flashes the screen at Lilly. 11:59. They both watch, waiting for it to change. There's no countdown, no fireworks or cheering or _Auld Lang Syne_. There's just darkness and crickets and numbers changing on a screen. There's just Miley going up on her tiptoes and kissing Lilly's cheek, saying, "Happy New Year."

"Happy New Year." Lilly looks down at her, moves a thread of hair from Miley's face, and leans to press a kiss to her forehead. "Thanks for coming back."

"Anytime," Miley says.

—

**spring**

As soon as they get back in January, Lilly starts scouring the internet for job postings. She goes down to the Career Services office on campus and they help her put together a resume, and she looks at sample cover letters online until her eyes cross. She's only taking two classes and her senior seminar this term, so she picks up more hours working in the lab because that gives her a lot of time in front of a computer screen and she can make sure she jumps on every single posting as soon as it's up.

She doesn't think about Oliver.

It had been so easy to sign her name to all the loan paperwork at the beginning of each year, but now she's graduating in a couple months with over fifty grand in debt and no job. She doesn't even have a _car_. "How am I going to get to work without a car?"

"You'll get a car," Miley says.

"How am I going to get money for a car without a job? It's a catch-22!" Lilly paces back and forth in front of Miley's bed. She's aware that her voice might be getting a little high, and she's aware that she may have been freaking out over not getting job every night for the past three weeks. But that's really no excuse for Miley to not even try to look sympathetic. "I can't get a car without a job and I can't get a job without a car and I'm not going to be able to pay back my loans and I'm going to end up living on the street dodging government hit men!"

Miley's sitting cross-legged behind her laptop and she looks up, forehead wrinkling. "Why are there government hit men?"

"They want their money!"

"Lilly. You seriously have to stop freaking out about this. I thought we talked about this last fall."

"That was when I had a whole year left before I had to worry about having a job! We're graduating in four months!" Four months. She's going to start hyperventilating just thinking about it. In four months she has to be an adult and go off on her own and support herself. She's not ready. No _way_ is she ready.

Miley gets off her bed and grabs Lilly's shoulders to stop her pacing. "Okay. Listen to me. You will find a job. There is absolutely no version of reality where you will end up on the street being chased by government hit men, which by the way, I don't think is how they collect outstanding loan payments. And you'll have a car. You can have mine."

"No, I can't. It's your car."

"Come on, it's half yours already. And I'm going to be in Europe for six months after we graduate. I'm not going to need a car. I'll just buy a new one when I get back. I've been wanting a new one anyway."

"I can't just take your car." It doesn't seem fair.

"Too late." Miley shakes her a little. "You're taking the car, and you'll drive it to your awesome job and pay off all the hit men. Okay?"

"Maybe," Lilly says. "We'll see." She still doesn't have a job.

Miley sighs and pats her shoulder and goes back to sit on the bed. "You know I know the president, right? So if there _were_ government hit men after you, I could probably get them called off."

Lilly laughs in spite of herself. "Well, that's a relief."

She tries to stop freaking out so much after that, and she has other things to worry about. Like Miley, who only goes out with Evan once a month but won't even look at other boys. Well, okay, she _looks_. And she comments. But she never _does_ anything, and if the boys try to she turns them down.

"Casual dating is what college is for," Miley says when Lilly bugs her about getting more serious with Evan, but if Lilly suggests going out with one of the other boys who ask, all she'll say is, "We're graduating in a few months. What's the point?"

Lilly wants to tell her that she'll buy one or the other of those things, but not both. She worries that Miley's shutting people out after Jake and Jesse, that she's afraid to let anyone get close. That she's afraid to fall in love again. Lilly doesn't say as much to Miley, exactly. She just worries.

The end of February gets closer and she hasn't heard anything back from any of the positions she applied to. She starts to widen her search outside of L.A. and doesn't tell Miley. Maybe something will come up and she won't have to.

At the beginning of March she finally gets a phone call. It goes well, and the position's perfect, right in L.A., but then at the end one of the women asks if she'd be able to start right away and she has to tell them no, she doesn't graduate for another two months.

After they hang up, she sits on the couch and trembles with the after-effects of nerves, and then she calls Miley. She's on her way to class, but of course she says she'll skip and come right back and they'll go out for ice cream and seriously, don't worry, there will be other jobs. Lilly doesn't have anything to do while she waits for Miley to come, so she just sits there, trying not to feel too worried and disappointed, and she has the phone in her hand and Oliver's number pulled up before she realizes what she's doing.

She just kind of freezes after that, staring at his name and number. She hasn't spoken to Oliver in two months and she misses him and for a minute she'd forgotten. She'd forgotten that she can't call him. It's been two months since she's spoken to him and she'dforgotten that they weren't together.

That means she did the right thing, she knows that, but he's her friend and she loves him and she wants so badly to call him but she can't. She doesn't know when she'll ever be able to call him again. The loss of him hits her then, not just her boyfriend but _Oliver_, the boy she's known her whole life. The boy she's hurt so badly he cannot stand to speak to her.

Lilly puts the phone down and doubles over. She presses her face into her knees and gasps out breath after breath like she can't keep them inside. She hasn't cried once over the breakup and she doesn't cry now. She can't. She can't cry and she can't call her oldest friend. What will she do without him?

She forces herself together when she hears Miley's keys in the door, straightening up and rubbing fingertips at the corners of her eyes even though there are no tears to wipe away. "Are you okay?" Miley asks, out of breath and worried, and for a second Lilly wonders how she knows, what sign she hasn't cleared from her face, but then she remembers. The job.

"I'm fine," she manages, and then Miley hugs her and tells her again about all the other jobs that are going to want to hire her and they go out and eat so much ice cream they decide to skip dinner. After, they come back to the apartment and watch movies in Lilly's bed on her laptop until they fall asleep.

Lilly wakes in the night with her nose smushed into Miley's upper arm. She levers herself up onto an elbow and checks to make sure the laptop is safe. It's between her legs and Miley's and she moves it to the floor so neither of them will accidentally roll over on it. Then she looks down at Miley, sleeping peacefully in her bed. The light is still on, and Lilly looks at her for a long time, memorizing the way her eyes twitch and her chest moves. Oliver is gone and soon Miley will be, too. What will Lilly do without her? What will she do when she is all alone?

Suddenly, again, she wants to call Oliver. She wants to get up out of bed and find her phone and call him, and when he answers, if he answers, she wants to tell him that she loves him and she made a mistake, beg him for another chance.

She won't let herself do it. Because she wouldn't be doing it out of love. She'd be doing it out of fear. Love was when she let him go.

Miley shifts a little in her sleep, turning her head, a meaningless noise slipping from her mouth. Lilly has her now at least. Tonight. She can lie back down, put her head on Miley's shoulder and hold onto her until Miley is the only thing she knows and the future narrows down the next breath they'll both take.

But she laid like that with Oliver once. So she takes a pillow and goes out to sleep on the couch instead. In the morning, she wakes to Miley standing over her. "What are you doing out here?" she asks.

"You were kicking," Lilly says. "And you need to cut your toenails. I think my calves are still bleeding."

Confusion flickers across Miley's face. They've shared a bed countless times and Lilly has never complained about kicking before. But all she says is, "You could have slept in my bed."

No, some part of Lilly thinks. That would have been worse. She would not have slept at all. "I like the couch."

"Okay, weirdo. You want breakfast? I can make toast."

Lilly watches her go into the kitchen, listens as she hums to herself, breaking out to sing a few words here and there. Miley does this in the mornings sometimes, when she's happy and there's no one else around. Lilly loves to listen to her.

She stays on the couch, listening. It's warm and the sun is sliding through the open blinds, pouring itself in stripes on the floor, and Miley is singing in the kitchen. She's okay without Oliver, Lilly realizes. She's been okay for two months. She's been okay for five years. That was the problem, wasn't it?

She could have a perfectly satisfying relationship with Oliver from three thousand miles away. Miley hadn't gotten into Stanford and Lilly had been ready to go to community college so they could be roommates. She'd almost gone to Paris and when she couldn't, Miley came here. Lilly wants to believe that it'll work the same with Miley as it does with Oliver. That it'll hurt but she'll be okay.

Miley's voice lifts in the kitchen, floating in to Lilly, and somehow she doesn't think it's going to be that easy.

—

Spring break that year is the most down time Miley's had in about six years. Usually she'd be doing a couple concerts or recording a single, or taping a guest spot on some tv show like Glee last year, but she's graduating in a month and a half and she'll have plenty of time for all that stuff then. This week she's just sleeping late and hanging out at the beach and making really good use of the hot tub now that she doesn't have to fight Jackson for it.

The only problem is Lilly's in Atlanta. Her mom basically laid a massive guilt trip on her about how who knew when Lilly would be able to visit her again because once she gets a job she'll be too busy and she won't have vacation time for a while anyway. That's assuming Lilly gets a job. Miley knows she's really stressed about it, because the economy still isn't great and Lilly's been applying to every job she could find since January and she's only heard back from one place, but they needed someone right away and couldn't hold the opening until after graduation.

Miley can't really keep herself from thinking about that a lot. After graduation. Her room doesn't help, because it's still got so much of Lilly's stuff in it, but Lilly isn't there. She goes out for Thai with Traci and tells herself she's only dwelling on this because she doesn't have anything else going on. It'll be different after graduation. She'll be too busy to think about Lilly, and there won't be so much around to remind her.

There wasn't much in that hotel room in Paris, and she had plenty to do there, but what she can feel coming back for her now is the same thing she felt then, an empty, echoing ache.

Jackson and Sienna come over for dinner the Saturday before she goes back to Stanford. They're getting married in the fall and Sienna shows her pictures of the dresses she's considering and they talk about the flowers and the cakes and how ugly she can make the bridesmaids' dresses before her friends revolt and refuse to wear them.

After they leave, Miley gets a bowl of ice cream and watches some tv on the couch, then puts in a movie and pops popcorn and practices catching it in her mouth, starts another movie and flips through the magazines her dad has on the coffee table, goes to get a bottle of water from the fridge, just knocking around the house so she won't have to go back out to her room. Her dad comes down a little after midnight and starts pulling stuff out of the fridge to make a sandwich. Mamaw would throw a fit if she knew.

"Can't sleep, bud?" he asks.

"Nah," she says.

"Not tired?"

"I've been sleeping until noon every day."

"That's gonna make it hard to get back into the swing of things."

How early does he think she gets up at Stanford? Seniors get first priority for registration, and if college has taught Miley anything it's not to schedule a class before eleven a.m. "I'll survive." She wanders into the kitchen and eyes his sandwich. It looks pretty good. "Can I have half?"

He gives her a look but slides half of it onto another plate for her. "So you doing okay?" he says after they've been munching on it for a while. She was right. It's a good sandwich.

"Yeah," she says. "Why wouldn't I be?"

He shrugs a little and pops the last bite of his half into his mouth. "Seems like you've been pretty quiet this week. I thought maybe you were a little down."

"I'm _relaxing_," she tries. "I'm on vacation." He raises an eyebrow. She should have known that wasn't going to work on him. "I've just been thinking about things. What's going to happen after graduation."

"You've got a lot of stuff coming up."

"Yeah." Starting off with another European tour. Has it really been five years since her last one? The time went by so fast it doesn't seem possible.

"I thought you were looking forward to it."

"I am. I'm just...worried about Lilly. She's really stressed out about finding a job."

"Well, I'm sure she'll find one, Mile. You shouldn't worry about that. Lilly's a smart girl and she knows her stuff. Someone's going to hire her."

"I know. It's just...I just wish..."

"That she was going with you on the tour?"

Miley sighs. She can never decide if it's annoying or comforting to have a father who knows her this well. "Yeah," she admits. She slumps in her chair and slides her plate towards him so he can have the uneaten quarter of her sandwich.

He makes short work of the sandwich and takes their plates over to the sink. "I've been thinking, too," he says, rinsing them off. He doesn't say anything else, just comes and sits back at the table and looks at her, and finally she's forced to say, "O-o-okay, about what?"

"I've been thinking that, now that you're all grown up, you might not want your old man hanging around all the time."

"Dad," she says.

"Oh, I don't mean it like that," he interrupts before she can get more of a protest out. "But I'm serious, you're a young woman now. You don't need me looking over your shoulder anymore. You need to go out on your own and have your life and I don't want to stop you from that."

"But, Daddy," she says, because he's not just her father. He's her manager.

"And I'll be honest with you, bud, I'm no spring chicken anymore. I know you're excited about everything you've got lined up, but just thinking about keeping up with you wears me out."

"So you're quitting?" she asks in disbelief. Would he really do that to her?

He nods. "I've been thinking about it. And I've been thinking that maybe you know someone who could take my place. A certain blonde Stanford student who's graduating in about six weeks?"

Lilly. Lilly as her manager. The idea is so perfect that for a moment Miley can't speak. Because her dad is right, she loves him, and she's grateful for everything he's done for her, but working together, the times they have to be around each other all day, every day...sometimes it's hard. And this way Lilly would have a job, and she'd get to come on the tour. They'd get to do everything together. For a lot longer than four years.

Miley sits up and leans over the table towards him. "Do you – do you think she could?" It's not that she doubts Lilly's capable, but her dad's job has always seemed unfathomably complicated and demanding and she's always been so glad that she didn't have to worry about any of the things he had to deal with. She doesn't want Lilly to get tossed into something overwhelming.

Her dad laughs. "Honey, I don't think she could do it. I _know_. And she'd do a dang good job of it, too. I don't know who you think coordinated your last album launch, but it sure wasn't me. And I didn't lift a single finger in Tennessee last summer. I spent the whole time laying poolside at the country club. Lilly did everything."

"Oh my god, you sneaky old man!" He'd said he was busy doing back-end stuff for the movie, and the whole time he'd been playing them! "No wonder you were so tan!"

He laughs again. "You have to admit she took care of everything. I was real proud of the way she handled it all. And I'm sure you had a better time than you would have with me. I wouldn't trust just anyone to be your manager, but I know you'd be in good hands with Lilly."

"Do you...do you think she would?" She remembers being in the airport, Lilly saying, _It's your life_. But not hers. Would she really be willing to give up whatever hers is going to be, just to be with Miley? It's a lot to ask.

And Lilly already said no, once.

Her dad sits back in his chair. "Now that I don't know. You're gonna have to ask her about it."

She will. She just has to find the right way to do it. Lilly said yes once too, before she said no. Miley just has to figure out what to say, how to convince her that it's different this time. That it doesn't have to just be Miley's life.

She just has to find the right way, and the right time, and then she'll ask.

—

Graduation's two weeks away and technically they all have finals, but no one cares. They go out Saturday night, all the graduating Music majors Miley knows and Ashley and Lilly, and the three boyfriends and girlfriends of Music majors who aren't Music majors themselves. There's a bar nearby that they go to, and pretty much fill the place to bursting, which the manager doesn't look too happy about until Miley talks to him and lets him set his price for them renting it out for a private party all night.

By then, some of the others have discovered the place is set up for karaoke. "Singing contest!" Cleo screams, which gets enthusiastic woos from everyone who concentrated in performance.

"I'm in," Miley says.

"You are so not in," Blake says.

"Yeah, seriously," says Rosa. "Amateurs only."

"What is this amateurs?" Miley scoffs. "You're all about to graduate with degrees in Music!"

Cleo is up on stage adjusting the mic. "No one who's ever gotten paid more than a million dollars to sing allowed!"

They all like being familiar with her, in such an innocuous sort of way that Miley doesn't mind letting them think they are. She sticks her tongue out at them. "Spoilsports!" She's finding she already feels for these people what she does for those she went to high school with, a fondness for a time and place she can't get back.

She goes to the bar and gets drinks for herself and Lilly, tells the bartender to start a tab and just put everything on it. She slides into a booth next to Lilly while Cleo attempts to take charge and organize the contest, which isn't an easy task since the mass of soon-to-be graduates seems to have instantaneously become aware that Miley's paying for drinks and are packed three deep around the bar to begin taking advantage as soon as possible.

"Are you sure it was a good idea to open a tab?" Lilly asks, trying not to laugh.

"Okay, anyone not singing, over there!" Cleo yells, pointing at their booth. "You guys are the judges!"

"Winner gets to sing onstage with Miley at her next concert!" calls out one of the boys. Miley can't tell which one, but everyone else seems to agree with him from the way they shout approval.

"I get final vote then!" Miley yells over them. Ashley's already sitting with them, and surprisingly the only other taker is Amber.

"You don't want to sing?" Lilly asks when Amber sits down next to Ashley, a glass of white wine in her hand. Ashley just has Coke because she's driving.

"Come on, you could take them," Miley tells her.

"Uh, no thanks," Amber says. "Last time I was onstage with you I ended up looking like broccoli." She shoots a sour look in Lilly's direction.

Lilly puts up both her hands in mock surrender. "Hey, any time you decide you need to stop speaking to me again, go right ahead. I can take it."

"Oh my god, I hate you so much," Amber huffs, and Lilly laughs.

The first girl up to sing picks one of Hannah's old songs, and as soon as everyone recognizes it they start to stomp their feet and boo. "Suck-up!" someone yells.

"Maybe she just likes good music!" Miley yells back and everybody groans.

The night starts to blur after that, blur into a hundred others that were just like it where the details are hard to recall but she knows she had one hell of a good time. The contest takes almost three hours and Miley stops really listening after the first one. Instead she and Lilly and Amber and Ashley sit there trading stories back and forth that all start with the words, "Remember that time..."

Miley misses high school and she misses college already and even though she can't wait for what's coming after she doesn't want it to end. This is the first time in her life she's ever felt old.

When the last singer stumbles off the stage, the four of them put their heads together and somehow choose a winner, but by the time she and Lilly are in the backseat of Ashley's car, Amber riding shotgun, Miley can't remember who it was. "Who'd we pick?" Miley whispers to Lilly. Amber's already passed out, and Ashley's humming along to the radio as she drives.

"Darcy," Lilly whispers back.

"Oh. Good." It's a good choice: she's talented and she and Miley will sound good together.

Ashley's car is tiny and Lilly leans over and lays her head on Miley's shoulder and Miley rests her own on top of Lilly's. "So what do you think?" Lilly asks. "Best four years of our lives?"

Miley's eyes start to close and she doesn't fight very hard to keep them open. "Yeah," she says, Lilly warm against her. "The best."

—

It's a week before graduation and Lilly's going crazy when she finally gets a call from a school up in Sacramento asking if she'll do a phone interview. She does one, right then, and thank god Miley's not in the apartment because Lilly still hasn't told her she's applied to any places outside L.A. When the interview's over they ask if she can come out to meet with them on Monday and Lilly says yes right away. It's a charter school for language arts, and their French program is really strong. It sounds great, and she's impressed with the school and the other teachers when they take her on a tour during the interview.

They call her back on Wednesday and offer her the position and she accepts without even thinking about it. She's been freaking out over finding a job since January and she's applied a million places and this is the only one she's gotten. It starts at the end of May, right before their summer session begins, which will give her two weeks to find an apartment and move her stuff in and get everything set up. Sacramento isn't exactly ideal, but maybe if she works there for a few years and gets experience, and the economy picks up some, then she'll be able to get a job in L.A. and move back.

This is a good thing, it really is, and she's excited about having a job and she wants Miley to be excited for her, but when she tells Miley about it that night, Miley just looks upset and says, "Sacramento?"

"Congratulations, Lilly," Lilly says sarcastically. "It's so great you got a job!"

"I'll never see you in Sacramento."

"Sure you will. It's not any farther from Malibu than Stanford is. I could come down on weekends – "

"How many weekends have we spent in Malibu? It's a six and a half hour drive."

"Well, there's Christmas – "

"Yeah, when you'll be in Atlanta."

"It's not like you're going to be in Malibu either!" Lilly says. God, this is typical Miley. Why can't she just be happy for her? Why does everything always have to be about how it's going to affect Miley?

"Yes, I will!" Miley paces around the living room. "I'll be there a lot. We were supposed to get a house and hang out and – "

"Come on, Miley, be realistic! When you do this, you work twelve hours a day. _Minimum_. You don't have time to hang out. Even if we were both in Malibu, we still wouldn't see each other. And I've got loans I have to pay back. I need a job."

Miley stops pacing. She sits on the couch and looks up at Lilly. "What if..." She licks her lips, and something in her face – she's nervous – makes Lilly sit down too. "What if there was a way to do both?"

"Both what?"

"You'd have a job and we could see each other. All the time."

Lilly doesn't have a very good feeling about this. "Miley, what are you talking about?"

"You could be my manager."

Lilly's jaw slacks and she has to blink a few times and swallow her shock before she can say anything. "I can't be your manager."

"Yes, you can, think about it. It's a great idea. You'd have a job and you could go with me and – "

"But I don't know the first thing about being your manager!"

"Yes, you do! Daddy says you did everything for the album launch, and for the movie last summer. He spent the whole time by the pool."

That distracts Lilly from her shock for a minute. "That sneaky old man! No wonder he was so tan!"

"That's what I said!" Miley says. She's excited now.

"Hey, wait a minute. That means I did your dad's job for him for two whole summers! And he guilted me into it! Free rent my – "

Miley waves a hand. "So I'll give you back pay."

That wasn't what she was worried about. "I don't want back pay, I want your dad to – wait, how much does your dad make?" Maybe she does want back pay.

"Well, Daddy only takes five percent because he's Daddy. But you'd get fifteen. That's the industry standard."

"Fifteen percent? Of what you make?" Miley nods. "Which last year was..."

"Fifty-four million. But it'll probably be more this year."

Lilly is suddenly really, really glad she's sitting down. In fact, she's just going to go ahead and put her head between her knees because she's feeling a little faint. Fifty-four million. Fifteen percent of that is over eight million dollars. Holy crap.

"See, Lilly?" Miley says, rubbing circles on her back. "You'd be able to pay back your loans no problem."

That snaps Lilly back to reality pretty quick. She's not going to be Miley's manager and make eight million dollars a year. She's going to take the job in Sacramento. Miley and Oliver are the rock stars. She's the normal one. High school, college, job, marriage, kids, life. That's her. And she can't put that on hold now any more than she could have four years ago.

She lifts her head and shrugs Miley's hand off her back. "Miley. I can't be your manager."

"Why not?"

"For one thing, the job's already taken. Remember your dad?"

"It was Daddy's idea!"

"Yeah, I guess it was if he's already been pawning it off on me the past two years. Wait. Wait a minute." She starts getting mad again. Oh, this is classic. Just classic. "The two of you have been planning this for the last two years and you're dropping it on me now? Two days before graduation? What, you thought you'd decide for me? 'Oh, I'll just wait to the last minute and tell Lilly and she'll be my manager – '"

"No. Lilly, no, I didn't know, I promise. Maybe Daddy's been planning this for two years, but not me."

Lilly pins her with a hard glare, not ready to let this go. "He let you in on it yesterday?"

Miley flushes and looks at the other side of the room. "Spring break," she admits.

Yeah, that's what she thought. "Spring break. That was a month and a half ago, Miley."

"I know! And I should have told you, I just...I was trying to find the right time, and you were so stressed out about not finding a job, and I didn't want you to think I was only offering because you hadn't found anything else."

"But now that I have one, I'm supposed to give it up? You just expect me to – "

"No!" Miley shouts, and it makes Lilly stare at how loud she is. She thinks Miley will yell now, both of them will, but instead Miley reigns in her temper, wrestles with it, and her next words are strained. "I don't expect you to."

Miley's voice breaks in the middle of that and she shuts her eyes and draws a breath. She suddenly looks so wretched that Lilly immediately wants to relent. She knows Miley wouldn't do that, she wouldn't just assume that Lilly would do whatever Miley wanted. So why is she angry?

Because she wants to say yes. That's why.

Miley's eyes are open and she's looking right at Lilly. "Last time you got mad at me because I didn't ask. I'm asking this time. I'm _asking_. I want you to be my manager. I want you to come with me."

"Let me think about it," Lilly says. She has to get out of there after that, think things through. It would be too easy for her to give in with Miley right there. She wants to do it even though she knows she shouldn't, comes close to it three times before she makes it out the door.

She goes to get a milkshake and stays until the place closes. They haven't been here since the end of spring term sophomore year, when Lilly ODed on their banana shakes during exams and couldn't stand to come back. It's strange to think that maybe they never will again. That she'll only have the memories of it left. She sits there and pulls up every single one of them, thinks of the past instead of what's ahead of her.

It's late when she gets back, the apartment quiet, and Lilly gets ready for bed mechanically. She sleeps deeply and doesn't dream, and when she wakes it's pitch black in the room and her pillow is damp with sweat and drool. She struggles to push herself up and remember what's happening through her sleep-fogged brain. She finds her phone to check the time and the screen lights up, shining into her eyes and bringing everything back.

Lilly flips her pillow over and resettles herself on the bed. What's she going to do? She wants to say yes. She wants to think she can. But it was so hard to find a job, and if she walks away from that...It was so hard and that's when she's just coming out of school. If she's gone for a year, two, five, how much harder would it be then? Would she ever even try to come back to this? If she doesn't leave Miley now, will she ever be able to?

And all right, to be fair, it's not like she feels called to teach or anything, and after just a year with Miley making, holy crap, _eight million dollars_, she certainly wouldn't be a position where she had to get a job. But what about the rest of it? The husband, the kids. How's she supposed to find that on movie sets and backstage at Miley's concerts?

She fumbles for her phone again. The screen tells her it's 4:36 am, but that's seven-thirty in North Carolina. She sends Joannie a text. _miley wants me to be her manager._

She has to wait almost five minutes for an answer. _thanks a lot truscott you just woke me up_.

_miley wants me to be her manager._

Lilly can almost hear her friend sighing.

_i know you're in love with her but do you really want to spend your whole life chasing after her and cleaning up her messes?_

That's how Joannie starts every conversation about Miley these days. _I know you're in love with her, but..._

But. But she can't spend her life living Miley's. That's why she came here, isn't it? _Last time you got mad at me because I didn't ask_, Miley said, like this time is different. But it isn't. This is just like four years ago, and Lilly's known this day was coming for a long time. She knows what she has to do.

Just like four years ago.

—


	5. After

**Thank you to everyone for reading this and especially for reviewing. I really appreciate everyone who's taken the time to let me know how much they like the story.**

**BCRebel: Okay, you totally nailed what this fic is about and said it better than I ever could, so thank you. And I can see how it would kind of fill a hole, because even if they aren't quite the same characters, I think what they feel for each other is the same. Though I can't really take credit for that, since it's straight from the show.**

**lita rocks: Thank you! I was glad the show had A&A turn up at Stanford, because I always liked them and was sad they didn't really get used in the later seasons. So I liked having a reason for them to be in this.**

—

**after**

Sacramento's nice. Lilly finds an apartment and gets everything moved in. Miley made her take all the furniture from their apartment in Stanford. _I'll be in Europe_, she'd said. _And I'll probably get a house when I get back. I'll just hire a decorator_.

Miley's already in Europe. Madrid, this time. She left the day after graduation.

Lilly's official start date is a week before the school's summer session begins, so she has time to get her classroom all set up. She hangs up posters with the French alphabet and examples of verb conjugations and laughs under her breath when she remembers telling Miley almost a year ago that she was ready to be done with school. At least now she'll be the one assigning the homework.

That satisfaction doesn't last very long, because as soon as school starts she realizes that for every assignment she gives out, she gets back twenty to grade. Per class.

But the kids are great. She's teaching fifth grade, which is the perfect age because they've all learned how to follow directions and stop picking their noses but they're still young enough that they look up to her and don't question that she's in charge. They test her a little first, but come on. She spent years handling Miley and Jackson and Oliver and Rico. She can control a herd of fifth-graders in her sleep.

After school each day, she straightens up her classroom, goes home and tries to cook dinner, grades papers. On the weekends she tries to get out and do things: restaurants, movies, hiking or going to the park. It's depressing, though, not having anyone to do them with. Most of the other teachers are older. They've got families, kids, and if they're going out on the weekend it's to Little League games or the neighborhood pool. The fourth grade math teacher sets Lilly up with her younger brother and they go out a few times, but after three dates they haven't found anything they have in common except being from California.

She drifts into routine after that. Work, home, grading, work, home, grading. She likes the kids and the school and teaching, but by the time she's been there six weeks it feels like work is the only thing in her life. It isn't how it's supposed to be. And she hadn't thought that she'd move here and work would be perfect and she'd meet someone immediately and fall in love and start planning a wedding and picking out baby names, but –

But she'd thought it would be different. She'd thought it would be like it had when she'd left Miley in the airport to go to Stanford. That had felt right, even necessary.

This just feels lonely.

Maybe things would be better if she were back in Malibu. Her dad would be there, and Miley would be coming back from Europe in a few months, and they'd see each other then. Oliver's there, too. He posted a comment on her status update sometime in early June and Lilly wrote something back. They've traded comments a few times since then and even texted once or twice. They haven't worked up to calling yet, but they'll get there. Maybe if she were in Malibu, they could meet for lunch sometime. He's dating this girl from a band that opened for a show he did back in May. Lilly's happy for him. She really is, but it makes her feel even more alone, like things are falling into place for everyone but her.

Maybe she should get a dog.

"Join an intramural league," Joannie says. Joannie thinks sports are the answer to everything. "You could meet people that way." Lilly's mother tells her to ask around at school and see if anyone else has a brother or a cousin they can set her up with. They're both good ideas, or at least not bad, but Lilly never gets around to acting on either of them. She tells herself she will, because she hates how disconnected she feels here. But she doesn't really want to start putting down roots either, and somehow both those things feel like a step in the wrong direction.

She and Miley talk a lot. Lilly calls her in the morning while she's getting ready for work, which is mid-afternoon for Miley, the perfect time for a rehearsal break or a pause between interviews. Miley calls her at night after her concerts are over and she's back at her hotel. It's usually right when Lilly's done with school, so they have a while before Miley falls asleep and Lilly has to figure out dinner. It should help, talking to her, but it doesn't, really. Lilly misses her terribly.

Saturdays are a little better. They can talk longer without Lilly having to worry about being late to work. "Are you ready for tonight?" she asks one morning. She didn't sleep in, but she hasn't gotten out of bed yet.

"Yeah, it's gonna be a good show," Miley says. "I wish you could see it."

"Me too." Lilly tries not to think about how much. "Is it sold out?"

"Come on, Lilly, who do you think you're talking to?"

Lilly laughs. "Sorry. I don't know what I was thinking." They talk a while longer and Miley asks what she has planned. Lilly does her best to make cleaning the apartment and grocery shopping sound a lot more exciting than it really is.

"I have to go," Miley says eventually. "Daddy's yelling at me. I'll talk to you later." Talk. They never used to say that. It was always see. I'll see you tonight, or after class, or at lunch. Lilly wants that back. She wants college. She wants the best four years of her life again.

Their conversations slowly stretch and weekday mornings Lilly's later and later to work. She blames it on traffic when she's really sitting parked in her car in the back of the lot, unable to hang up until Miley reluctantly says there's twenty members of the press or back-up dancers and a choreographer waiting on her. They talk even longer in the afternoons. Miley falls asleep on the phone once, and then twice, and then every day. Even then, Lilly sometimes doesn't hang up right away. She listens to Miley breathing until she feels like she might cry, and then she puts her phone away and spends the rest of the night convincing herself this will get better once she gets used to it.

Lilly never tells Miley she misses her. She can't. Some things are too overwhelming to be put into words, and Lilly thinks if she tried it would be her undoing. Miley never says it either, and Lilly's glad of that. It would be almost as hard to hear as to say.

She sets her ipod to wake her up with Miley's latest album, playing low. There's a few minutes as she comes out of sleep when she can almost make herself believe that it really is Miley, that she's there, singing in the kitchen.

She starts to tense up every time she hears footsteps on the stairs outside her apartment, holding her breath. It takes her weeks to notice she's doing it, and as soon as she does her whole face flushes red with embarrassment. She realizes she's been thinking each time of that day, the knock on the door and Miley standing there when she opened it.

But Miley isn't coming. Miley already came. And going to college is one thing, but what would she do in Sacramento? There's nothing for her here.

They get a two days off for Fourth of July and Lilly goes down to Malibu and gets burgers with her dad and they go down the PCH and then out on the beach to see fireworks. Lilly records them on her phone and sends the video to Miley, who's been complaining nonstop about how jealous she is that Lilly gets a four-day weekend.

She goes back a day early to run errands. She stands in line for an hour at the Auditor's office to change the registration on the car, and she's handing over her license and the title when the woman asks for them, thinking about her lesson plan for school tomorrow, and suddenly she has no idea what she's doing here.

She has no idea what she's doing here, and it's not just Sacramento. Going back to Malibu and seeing her dad was nice, but it wasn't any _better_, because this isn't what she wants. She doesn't want the best four years of her life to be over, for them to be only memories, for everything to be downhill from now. She's here alone working a job that barely covers rent and groceries, and for what? Because this is what she's supposed to do? College, job, husband, kids. That's always been the plan. But why? Why is she so determined to make that her life, when all she really wants –

All she really wants from her life is for it to be where Miley is.

And if there's nothing here for Miley, then what is there for Lilly?

"I need something with your current address on it," the woman behind the counter says.

"What?" Lilly asks. She'd forgotten where she was.

"You got a utility bill or something?" The woman holds up Lilly's driver's license. "This still says Malibu."

Lilly looks down at the electric bill in her hand. "No, I, uh, never mind," she says, gathering up the rest of the papers and reaching out to pluck her license back. She grins at the woman, sure she must look crazy and not caring even a little. "Never mind. I don't think I'm staying."

—

The rental car has GPS. Miley follows its calm, measured directions, the only sound in the car its British-tinged words. The flight was long and there was a two hour layover in D.C. She's tired but can't even think about wanting to sleep.

Miley pulls into the parking lot at the apartment complex. It's not five o'clock yet, most people are still at work. There's plenty of spaces. _You have arrived at your destination_, the GPS intones and Miley reaches out and shuts it off.

She sits for a minute in the car before she gets out, glancing at the numbers on the side of the building to find the right stairway. Lilly's apartment in on the top floor. Miley knows, she remembers Lilly complaining about how she and her dad had to haul all her furniture up two flights of stairs at the beginning of summer. They're long flights, too, concrete steps that make Miley's footsteps echo between the walls on either side.

Other things echo in her mind. The last time she did something like this. The last four years, the last two months. The last conversation she'd had with her father before she left.

"What are you doing, Miley?" her dad had said, watching her throw a few changes of clothes into a carry-on. "You're in the middle of a tour."

"We're in London for two weeks. I don't have a concert until Friday. If you rearrange the press I can still fit everything in."

"You can't just drop everything and fly to California every time you miss Lilly. It's only been two months, Mile."

"I know." She didn't know how to explain that it wasn't those two months that were making her do this. It wasn't the two months she'd already gone through that were unbearable. It was all the months that were still coming. All the days stretching out empty and alone no matter how much she packed into them, no matter how many people thronged around her. She'd thought maybe it would be easier after college, after they'd had another four years. But it wasn't. It was worse. "I just need to talk to her."

"You can call her on the phone."

"No. I need to see her." She hurried on before her dad could tell her she could do that on her phone too. "I need to ask her one more time. And then if she says no..." Well, that would be it, wouldn't it? It would just be Miley. "I just need to talk to her." Or beg. Maybe if she begged.

"What are you going to say?"

She'd zipped up the bag, tossed it over her shoulder. "I don't know."

Standing on the welcome mat outside Lilly's apartment, her hand raised to knock, she still doesn't know. _I miss you. I need you. Come with me. Let me stay_.

It's the last one that scares her the most.

There's no answer to her knock. Miley knocks again. Still nothing. She frowns. It isn't five yet, but it's close, and Lilly's normally home by now. Miley knows because they always talk this time of day. She glances back down at the parking lot. Lilly's car isn't there. Maybe she's running late?

Miley has a key. Lilly sent it to her. Miley laughed so hard the day she got it and called Lilly and woke her up, forgetting the time difference. "You're crazy. You remember I'm on another continent, right?"

"Not forever," Lilly had said, her voice slow with sleep. She yawned. "And this way you can stop by whenever you want. In case you're ever in the neighborhood."

Miley laughed again. "Go back to sleep, psycho. I love you."

"Love you, too," Lilly said, and Miley sat running her thumb along the edge of the key for a long time after they hung up, a lump in her throat. Because that was what it really meant, wasn't it? That Lilly loved her. That Miley was always welcome where Lilly was.

She hopes it means Lilly won't be too angry when she hears why Miley came, that she'll at least listen before she turns Miley down again.

Miley knocks one more time just to be sure, then fishes out the key and goes inside. The apartment's dark. Some light filters in between the blinds on the windows, which seems weird. Why is Lilly keeping the blinds down during the day? Miley sweeps her hand along the wall until she finds the light switch and flips it on. She steps all the way in and shuts the door. "Lilly?" she calls out, even though she knows Lilly's not there.

Lilly's given her the tour via phone, so Miley knows the layout of the apartment. She wanders through it, checking things out and turning on lights. Lilly's bed is made. Another weird thing. Lilly never makes her bed in the morning. She's always running late and waits to do it until she gets back in the afternoon. Miley likes to tease her about it, because why even bother at that point? Lilly always sticks out her tongue and says, "Making our beds is what separates us from the animals."

The coffee maker in the kitchen is unplugged. So are the toaster oven and microwave, and there's nothing in the fridge. Absolutely nothing. Not even butter or a bottle of catsup. No dishes in the sink or dishwasher. Miley turns a slow circle in the living room. Everything's put away. There's nothing just lying around. It doesn't look like an apartment anyone left in a hurry for work this morning. It doesn't look like an apartment anyone's planning on coming back to this afternoon.

Miley's phone is off, it's been off since she left for Heathrow, avoiding everyone. She turns it on now and there's nothing. A few voicemails from her dad, texts from Jackson and Traci, a missed call from Ashley, but nothing from Lilly. It's been almost twenty-four hours. Lilly should've tried to call her by now.

Miley sends her a text. _where are you?_

She goes to the window and lifts the blinds with her fingers and peers out at Lilly's view while she waits for an answer. It comes a few minutes later.

_london_. Miley laughs, incredulous. The sound fills the silent apartment. She gets another text almost immediately. _why? where are you?_

Miley has to sit on the couch before she can answer. She can't stop smiling and her fingers are trembling with elation and relief. Lilly's in London. Miley is not alone in this. She's not the only one. Lilly is in London. _sacramento_, she texts. She sends another one right after. _stay there. i'm on my way_.

—

Lilly's collected her luggage and gone through Customs and gotten a car to take her to the hotel before she gets Miley's text.

_where are you?_

Lilly looks out the car window, watches the lights and buildings slide past, more people on the sidewalks this late than there ever are in Sacramento. She almost doesn't answer Miley. Her plan was just to show up. But it's late and she'll be at the hotel soon. Maybe it's better if Miley has some warning.

_london_, she answers. Then she glances at the clock in the cab's dash and remembers just how late it is. Why is Miley sending her a text at three in the morning asking where she is? Miley shouldn't even be awake. She starts another message. _why?_ she types, her stomach sinking. _where are you?_

_sacramento_, comes the answer, and disbelief pushes all the air out of Lilly's body in a single, surprised huff. Miley's in Sacramento. She came. If Lilly needed any more proof that she's doing the right thing, here it is. She has to see Miley. Right away. Lilly swallows against the need. If she turns the cab around now –

_stay there_, Miley says. _i'm on my way_.

And as much as Lilly wants to turn around and _go_, try to meet Miley halfway, she does what Miley says. She lets the cab continue to the hotel, lugs her bags inside and stands with them in lobby while the man behind the desk calls up to Mr. Stewart's room. He comes off the elevator dressed in a bathrobe and looking not at all surprised to see her. "Miley went to Sacramento," he says.

"I know," Lilly says. "She's coming back."

"Looks like you girls need to do a better job coordinating your travel plans," he drawls. Lilly blushes. She doesn't have an explanation for her presence here. There's no reason for her to show up out of the blue after two months when she's supposed to be at work in Sacramento. She wonders what Miley told him when she left.

He watches her for a minute and she shifts from foot to foot, fighting the urge to duck her head like she's a kid who got caught stealing cookies before dinner. Finally he takes pity on her. "You want something to eat? It'll be time for breakfast soon."

She shakes her head, relieved. "I ate on the plane. I'm just...really tired."

"Come on, then," he says, and helps her with the bags. He lets her into Miley's suite and goes back to his own, telling her to let him know when she's up and he'll take her out to eat.

She drops her bags in the middle of the room and looks around. Their high school graduation picture is on the table in the main room, one of them as Hannah and Lola on the dresser, another of them in front of their freshman dorm beside the bed. Lilly has tons of pictures up of them at her apartment, she even still has that collage she made before they started college, but she didn't know Miley was doing the same thing, not in hotel rooms where she only stays a few nights or a couple weeks.

She's been traveling almost twenty hours and she's really tempted to take a shower, but she's even more tempted to fall into the bed and not get out of it for at least the next ten hours. It's half light when she wakes and she thinks maybe she didn't sleep very long, but when she checks the clock it's almost eight p.m. She slept the whole day.

Lilly tries calling Miley but doesn't get an answer. She's probably still in the air. So Lilly takes a shower and calls Mr. Stewart and they walk down the street to a restaurant with outdoor seating. It's up on a roof of a building, lights on struts overhead. He gets them seated right away and orders three different appetizers and water. "That'll help with the jetlag," he tells her. "Wait until tomorrow morning before you have any caffeine."

They put in the rest of their order and don't talk until after the appetizers come. "So how long are you here for?" he asks as she tears into the bruschetta. She's ravenous.

Lilly keeps her eyes on her plate. "Well," she says cautiously. "I guess...as long as Miley wants me to be."

He sighs and out of the corner of her eye she can see him sit back in his chair. "Thank goodness," he says. "Because I really hate London." When she looks up at him he's smiling. She hadn't been sure until then that Miley was telling the whole truth about the manager thing being his idea, so she tries to smile back.

She looks back at her plate and takes another bite. "I wouldn't pack your bags yet," she says. "She might not want me around that long."

He snorts. "That's never gonna happen."

"You don't know what I came to say to her."

"Which is what?" He's watching her closely now, his eyes on her face.

"I don't know," she says, because she doesn't, exactly. Just that it will change things. "What did she say when she left for Sacramento?"

"She said she needed to talk to you."

"About what?"

He hasn't moved at all, hasn't even blinked. "What do you think?"

"I think she wants me to be her manager."

He shakes his head just a little, doesn't break eye contact. "She wants you to be with her," he corrects, and then the waiter is sliding more plates in front of them. Lilly devours every bite.

She sits in the hotel room after they get back, waiting. She still hasn't heard anything from Miley, so she doesn't know when to expect her. It's past nine and truly dark. She wishes Miley had come already, that she'd gotten here during the day. The dark makes it far too easy to imagine things going wrong.

She gets the pictures from around the room and lines them up on the coffee table. There's five of them total. Lilly has a bunch more on her phone and she flips through them. She and Miley look so happy in all of them. And even though they fight a lot, even though Miley can frustrate her to no end, that's what Lilly is with her. Happy. More than anything or anyone else, Miley makes her happy, and Lilly doesn't want to waste any more time without her.

She just hopes Miley doesn't either.

It's funny, because Lilly has been listening for footsteps for months now, but this time she doesn't hear them. She only hears the lock clicking, only just has time to stand before the door opens and Miley's there.

Miley stops when she sees Lilly and Lilly stops when she sees Miley and Miley's not holding the door so it swings shut behind her. The noise of its closing sounds much louder than it should. Miley clears her throat. "Hi," she says.

"H-hi," Lilly says.

"Your apartment's really nice," Miley says, just as Lilly blurts out, "I can't believe you went to Sacramento." Miley takes a step towards her and that's all Lilly really needs. Somehow they both cross the room and then they're holding each other, Miley's arms so tight Lilly thinks she might crack a rib.

Lilly presses her face to Miley's shoulder and breathes in, tightens her own arms. They stand there, not talking, just holding on like they can't let go, and maybe they can't. "This isn't...," Lilly says. "It's not..." She wants to tell Miley this isn't what you feel for your best friend. It's something different, something more. But then she raises her head and they're kissing, so Miley probably knows already.

Lilly isn't sure if she kissed Miley or Miley kissed her, but it doesn't seem to matter, because no, this isn't what you feel for your best friend. It's what you feel for the one person you have to have in your life all the time, no matter what. It isn't love. It isn't even lust. Joannie was right, it's need. Need making her move her hands to the sides of Miley's head, making her open her mouth to Miley's, making Miley's fingers dig into her hips and clutch her closer. And Lilly really wants to be surprised, but what she's thinking is, _We shouldn't have left this so long_.

Maybe if they hadn't, it wouldn't be so overwhelming now. As it is, it shorts her brain and she can only react without thought. Miley yanks Lilly's shirt off over her head and Lilly's fingers rip at the buttons on Miley's, popping off several when she can't get them undone. She peels the shirt from Miley's shoulders and it falls unnoticed to the floor.

At first what they're doing just feels urgent, frantic, like they stretched themselves too thin these past months and now they need to be as close as possible, tear away everything that could come between them. But once they've torn the shirts away, they start tearing at each other, Miley's teeth at her throat, Lilly's nails on Miley's back. She bites the knob of Miley's shoulder, scrapes her teeth together.

Miley smells. She's been traveling close to two days and she smells, not of soap or perfume or anything but herself and sweat. It flares in Lilly's nose and throat and blood, and it's too much. It's too much of a shock, too much welling up in her, that urgency, that need, anger, fear. She feels like an animal backed into a corner, lashing out, and if she could think she might wish that if they're going to do this, there be something of love in it, or romance, some kind of gentleness. Something other than this hunger. But she can't think. She can't control what's happening. Neither of them can.

They're at the bed and Lilly doesn't know how they got there. They should slow down, they should stop, they should –

She pushes Miley down onto it, straddles her, drags her mouth from the swell of Miley's breast up over her collarbone and along her throat to the edge of her jaw, teeth sharp, marking her. One thought forces itself out of the whirlwind. Mine, it says. Mine mine mine _mine_.

Miley flips them over, presses her down. Lilly pushes back against her, desperation heaving violent through her as she tries to buck Miley off. But her feet are caught behind Miley's knees, Miley's weight is heavy on her, Miley's mouth attacking just as Lilly's had. She nips hard at the underside of Lilly's breasts and the skin over her ribs, and Lilly rakes fingers down Miley's back in protest. It hurts and she doesn't like it, so it catches her by surprise when Miley's mouth closes over her nipple and she comes, short and hard and painful as Miley's bite.

It makes her gasp, the aching crackle of it burning along her nerves, and Miley has her pants undone, is yanking them off before Lilly can process what's happening. For a second panic stings her, and then Miley is on her again and it blends into everything else, into the fear she's been carrying for months, years, the fear that's clawing its way out of her now. She latches fingers into Miley's hair and pulls her up, melds their mouths together.

Miley's jeans are gone too and Lilly rolls them over, presses a leg tight between Miley's. There is nothing between them now, but still they struggle against each other. They wrestle back and forth, a fevered, cutting tangle, and time slows, then speeds, and Lilly loses any sense of how long they've been at this. She can see the marks she's made already, angry and red on Miley's skin, but that doesn't stop her from making new ones. Her nails trail the space between Miley's ribs and she sucks on the skin under Miley's ear, worrying it with her teeth until Miley rolls them over again, her legs wound tight around Lilly's and her mouth back at Lilly's throat like this is some kind of perverse contest to see which of them can hurt the other more.

Miley's hand closes around her breast, too hard. Pain blooms across her chest, but Miley's hand is gone, moving down, and it's too fast. It isn't supposed to be like this. This is – this is a fight. One of them is going to take everything from the other, and they are fighting to see who it will be. Lilly's nails scrabble against the tender skin of Miley's waist, trying to get her to stop, to yield, because if they keep going this way they might destroy each other. But Miley's doesn't stop, her fingers suddenly rough on Lilly's clit, pausing for half a second at Lilly's entrance on the verge of shoving in as harsh and crude as the rest of this has been.

Lilly whimpers. She doesn't mean to, but she does, and Miley freezes. Both of them freeze and Miley's eyes go to hers and it's the first time they've looked at each other since this started. Once they do, they can't look away, and then it's over. Lilly knows if they go on from here, they won't be able to say that this was an accident, or jetlag, or that they were possessed by whatever it was that had hold of them until just now, because that's gone. It's gone the instant their eyes meet, and if they keep going there won't be any way to pretend that this is anything other than the two of them, doing exactly what they're doing.

They stay frozen for a long moment, panting, caught on each other's eyes. Then Lilly nods. She nods and Miley doesn't blink, her gaze doesn't waver, but her fingers move, slowly, gently pushing in. Lilly tries to keep her eyes open, keep them on Miley, but she can't. They slide shut and every part of her focuses down on the feeling of Miley inside her. Miley moves her hand out, then back in, and Lilly pushes her hips up to meet it. She can hear both of them breathing, Miley still panting and her own breath coming in fits and starts. Miley's hand keeps moving, her palm against Lilly's clit, her lips pressing faint, delicate kisses like apologies to the places she bit before.

It's not a surprise this time. Lilly can feel it building and building, and it's Miley, it's Miley doing this to her, it's –

She comes and her eyes still won't open, but she knows Miley is there, she knows Miley is watching her, and that makes her come harder. Her body shakes, her muscles going rigid, locking around Miley's fingers, everything sparking. She loses herself for a minute and when she comes back Miley's hand is gone and Lilly can feel embarrassment flushing through her, coating her.

But Miley is there, her body close and hot above Lilly's, and Lilly turns her head and captures Miley's mouth, kisses her hard, trying to drive away her shame. Miley gives before her, lets Lilly push her down and over, lets Lilly cover Miley's body with her own. She feels it coming back, a ghost of that urgency, that thing that wanted only to devour, but Miley is trembling under her and Lilly can't – she cannot be the cause of that.

She moves her mouth to hover at the edge of Miley's jaw, pressing and sucking lightly, slowly, trying to make it as different as she can from how she snatched and tore before. She lets her fingers rest light on Miley's cheek and brings her other hand up to slide into the slickness between Miley's legs, and Miley is just the opposite of Lilly. She keeps her eyes open.

Lilly wants to close hers again, to concentrate on what she's feeling, the heat enveloping her fingers, but she doesn't. She locks her eyes on Miley's and strokes her hand up and down. She's never felt anything like this. Is this what Miley felt? She can't believe she's doing it – how can she? But she can't stop, not when Miley's looking up at her, not when out of the corner of her eye Lilly can see pink rising like a wave across Miley's chest and up her neck. Lilly is doing that to her. She's doing that to Miley.

She strokes her fingers down and presses them in, just a little, sees it register like a shock in Miley's eyes. She draws back, only for a second, then pushes in farther, and no, she's never felt anything like this, Miley closing around her. Blood roars loud in her ears and all her breath has left her and Miley is the only thing she can see. It seems like forever Miley holds her like that before her head snaps back, her eyes closing finally while she tightens around Lilly's fingers. Lilly draws a shuddering breath and lowers her own head to nuzzle at Miley's neck without thought, every single part of her focused on the slide of her fingers, the feel of Miley on them.

Lilly slows her hand, stops it, but when she goes to move it away Miley grabs her wrist and holds it there, arching herself against it for a minute before her body goes limp and she lets it go. Her face is turned from Lilly. Lilly withdraws her hand and licks her lips, waits to see if Miley will turn back. But she doesn't, and after a moment Lilly rolls away onto her back. Miley shifts a little then, drawing the sheet up over her body. It drifts across Lilly's as well, settling featherlight and cold.

It takes a long time for their breathing to return to normal. Lilly's glad of that, because now that it's over, now that there's nothing else to do, she has no idea what to say and Miley isn't talking either. She wasn't expecting this. They hadn't exactly talked about what it was going to mean before they did it. They hadn't talked about it at all.

The sheet has warmed but cooling sweat makes Lilly shiver and her breath is slow and even, quiet. She stares up at the ceiling and doesn't look at Miley and says, "I quit my job."

"Really?" Miley says. There's something in her voice that Lilly wants to think is hope, but she can't be sure. "You know, uh..." Miley clears her throat. "You know, Daddy hates London."

Lilly nods at the ceiling. "He told me."

"How about you?" She could be asking if Lilly wants a cup of tea. Unease starts to pool in Lilly's veins. Miley can't really think they can avoid discussing what just happened, can she? She can't want to.

"Are we going to talk about this?"

"About what?"

_About what_. "What just happened."

"What do you want me to say?" Miley asks, her voice so neutral and dead she might as well be a machine, like what they've done is so abhorrent she would rather shut down than face it.

"I don't _want_ you to say – " Lilly's throat closes and she chokes back desperation, the little voice in her head that's screaming, No, no, no, don't do this to me, don't let this ruin us. She can see how that would go, can see everything falling away from her, the loss too much to comprehend, and terror grips her because, oh, she knows it now. This is the hard thing. When everything's at stake. It takes a long minute before she can breathe again, talk. "Are you – are you okay with this?"

Miley sighs. She turns on her side in the bed, facing Lilly, and Lilly rolls to face her, trying not to be afraid of what she'll find when she does. Even if Miley isn't, even if she regrets it, they can go on from this. They will find a way, somehow. They have to.

Miley lifts a hand. "I'm not okay with this," she says, tracing some of the red marring Lilly's shoulder. But Lilly isn't worried about a couple bites and scratches, not when there are things at stake that might not heal as easily as their skin. "But the rest of it..."

Miley shrugs and drops her hand, moves onto her back again. Lilly studies the line of her profile. "I went to Sacramento to ask you to come back with me." Her eyes squeeze shut and on top of the sheet her hand balls into a fist. Lilly doesn't dare say anything. "I went to tell you that I was going crazy missing you. That I hate it here without you. This is my dream, this is supposed to be what I love, but it doesn't mean anything without you. So I went to tell you that I want you in my life. All the time. Every day. I want you."

"You want me, like...?"

Miley shakes her head. Her hand relaxes, her eyes fall open. "I don't know. I just, I _want you_. I need you. I wasn't thinking – I hadn't thought – And when I saw you I just – But I...I liked it." Miley whispers the last three words and a burn kindles low in Lilly's stomach. She liked it, too. Her _body_ liked it. Even during the beginning, which Lilly didn't like and doesn't want to ever repeat, her body had reacted. And after that, it had been indescribable.

Miley's throat works up and down. "Well?" she says finally.

"Well, what?"

The look Miley gives her is so exasperated and disbelieving that Lilly almost laughs. They're going to be all right if Miley can look at her like that in the middle of this. "_Well_, what about you?"

"I quit my job," Lilly says. "What do you think?"

"You want to be my manager?"

Oh, of all the...Miley's just being difficult now. Lilly wonders if Miley's father thought the same thing of her at dinner. "I want to be with you," Lilly corrects.

"With me, like...?"

This happened so fast that it's hard to process. Maybe it doesn't matter how they're together, as long as they are. "I don't know," she says, and has to work hard not to smile when Miley looks miffed at that despite having said the same thing herself just a minute ago. It sends a swell of fondness through her, and then the urge to kiss Miley. That surprises her, but then she thinks, why not? "Come here."

"What?" Miley says. "Why?" She looks alarmed, and Lilly wonders what it is she thinks Lilly could do to her that they haven't done already.

"I want to kiss you," Lilly says, and that makes Miley go still. It's a neat trick, Lilly thinks, leaning in. She wonders how long it will last.

She is careful to be tender, careful not to demand, to take. She only moves her lips softly and slowly on Miley's, lets Miley do the same, both of them letting time slip past unnoticed. Desire uncurls itself in Lilly's stomach and her hand comes up to rest on Miley's neck, her fingers stroking Miley's skin.

Lilly pulls away finally, reluctantly, and draws her hand back. Miley's lips are parted and her eyes flutter open, slightly unfocused. Lilly's mind goes back to how she'd looked earlier, the way she'd felt under Lilly's fingers. Then she thinks about never seeing that or feeling it again.

Okay. It matters.

Miley slides closer and Lilly puts a hand on her shoulder to stop her. "Wait. We're talking."

"We have plenty of time to talk," Miley says.

"No, we don't," Lilly says, looking at the clock behind Miley. "It's almost one."

"Really?" Miley twists around until she can see the clock, then sighs. "I have to be up by five. Early interviews."

It hits Lilly then what it's going to be like to live this way, and she almost sighs too. Twelve to fourteen hour days, sometimes longer. Months on the road, months living in buses or hotel rooms. More months spent away on movie sets, trips for interviews and concerts. Only being home for maybe half the year. Getting up before dawn and falling into bed at the end of the day so exhausted you can't move. "How long are you gonna want to keep doing this?"

Miley stiffens, and when she speaks a moment later, her voice is strained. "As long as you'll let me, I guess."

Lilly hadn't meant it like that. "I didn't mean it like that."

"But I...I'd rather quit than lose – "

"You won't."

"Lilly..."

"You _won't_."

"I – " Miley stops and shakes her head. "I have to go to the bathroom."

Lilly stares up at the ceiling until she hears the bathroom door shut. She doesn't know what to think. For all that they've been talking, apparently they still haven't said enough. It's too much all at once, and they're both too afraid of having it go badly. With good reason, maybe, considering the way Lilly just put her foot in her mouth.

She sits up, then get out of the bed, deciding she'd rather have the rest of this conversation clothed. She feels naked enough as it is without adding actually nudity into it. And even though they...even after what they did, the idea of sitting around and talking with no clothes on seems incredibly weird.

She stares for a long minute at the clothes scattered on the floor, her mind flashing to Miley tearing them from her, Miley's mouth and hands on her everywhere. Her whole body flushes, tingles, and how can it be like this? How can she react so strongly when before tonight she hadn't even thought, hadn't let herself think...

But they have never felt anything for each other faintly.

She leaves the clothes where they are and finds some boxers and an old T-shirt in her suitcase. She's pulling her hair free of its neck when she catches sight of her phone on the table in the other room and suddenly what she wants is to tell someone. To tell someone else, to have someone else know that this, that _something_ has happened. That something has changed. But she doesn't know who to tell or what to say.

She takes the phone back to bed with her, sits looking at it while she listens to water running in the bathroom. What she feels for Miley, what she's always felt, and how she wants her now...Lilly isn't stupid. She knows how that adds up, at least on her end.

Her thumbs hang over the keypad. She can't tell her parents, obviously. Not yet. And not Oliver. Definitely not Amber or Ashley. Which is why she ends up sending Joannie a text that reads, _so it turns out i'm in love with miley_.

Something eases in her once she's sent it, calms. She doesn't know how Miley feels or what she wants, but she knows herself now. And she knows it's more than that, it's always been more between her and Miley, more than anything else. But there is love, too. Miley has always meant everything to her, and now Lilly...she wants Miley to be everything, too.

Lilly wasn't really expecting a reply, but not even a minute goes by before Joannie answers. _no shit, sherlock_. Lilly rolls her eyes, then gets another message before she can even start to reply to the first. _you cave and go to london yet?_

Another eyeroll._ yes_.

_so is she at least a decent lay?_

Lilly squawks in shock. She can't believe Joannie just said that. She can feel her body flushing again, memories crowding up, and she types out an answer before she can think better of it. _more like spectacular_.

"What are you doing?" Miley asks.

"Telling Joannie I'm in love with you." She's still messing with the phone, hitting send, so it takes her a minute to realize Miley hasn't said anything. Fear knifes into her when she does. Maybe she shouldn't have said that. Maybe Miley doesn't want – maybe she doesn't feel – or maybe Lilly shouldn't have _told_. Maybe Miley wouldn't want anyone to know.

Lilly has to look up then, because Miley still hasn't spoken. Miley is standing there wrapped in one of the hotel bathrobes, and there is such a look of wonder on her face that Lilly's heart stutters and she has to take a breath to make it go again. "You're in love with me?" Miley says.

"Well, what would you call it?" Lilly says, and Miley shakes her head but she's smiling. It's the first time all night Lilly's felt anything close to happiness.

Miley climbs into the bed next to her. They don't touch. "What did Joannie say?" she asks, not quite meeting Lilly's eyes.

"She asked if you were any good in bed."

Miley lets out an awkward laugh. Lilly peeks out of the corner of her eye and sees that Miley's face is a brilliant scarlet. "She'd better watch out," Miley mutters. "I could buy that team of hers and have her fired." Joannie got a job as the assistant coach for a minor league women's soccer team.

"I'm sure she fears your wrath," Lilly says, reaching out a hand to pat Miley's leg in consolation. Both of them start at the contact, eyes flying to each other's, cheeks coloring again. It's as if they haven't ever touched before, never mind what they were doing not fifteen minutes ago.

They hold each other's gaze for a long, unmeasured time. Lilly's been in love before, and so has Miley, and both of them know this goes deeper than that. Miley nods, finally, once, like Lilly did before, and this is how it is, then, for both of them. They look away, chuckling weakly, nervously, suddenly shy. Which should be crazy, but here they are after ten years, finding themselves like this, finding everything and nothing changed.

"I – " Miley says, at the same time Lilly blurts out, "We should sleep."

They laugh again, still nervous. "Yeah," Miley agrees, and so Lilly sets her phone on the nightstand and they settle themselves in the bed, pulling up covers and turning off the lamp. Everything is dark and quiet for a moment. Then Miley speaks, her voice barely above a whisper. "I don't want you to hate this. I know this is my dream, not yours."

And maybe it's true that this isn't what Lilly would have chosen for herself. But she chose Miley. She's choosing Miley. If this is what comes with that, then so be it. "I already got my dream, remember? Now I just want you."

"But are you sure you – "

"Miley." It's late. She's tired. And Miley was right, earlier. They have plenty of time to talk. They have plenty of time for everything now. "Go to sleep. We have to get up soon."

Miley sighs, but Lilly can tell from the way she does it that she's going to listen. "You know, you don't have to get up early just because I do."

Lilly raises an eyebrow even though Miley can't see it in the dark. "You think I'm going to let you go off alone on my first day as your manager?"

"Oh, I get it," Miley says. Lilly hears the smirk in her voice. "You're going to be one of those really hands-on managers."

Lilly's jaw drops. "Oh my god," she says. "That was terrible. That's it, I just changed my mind. I'm going back to Sacramento." She moves like she's going to climb out of the bed and head for the door, but Miley snakes out an arm and catches her by the wrist.

"You're not going anywhere, Truscott," she says, and Lilly laughs, a real laugh, not nervous at all, and lets herself fall back in the bed.

"All right, okay," she says, pretending to give in while Miley wraps an arms across Lilly's waist and lays her head on Lilly's shoulder. "I'll stay."

"Thank you," Miley says, and it doesn't sound like a joke anymore, so Lilly says, "I love you."

Miley moves her head, kisses the side of Lilly's throat. It makes Lilly swallow hard. "I love you, too," she says, and then they really do try to sleep.

Lilly is right on the edge of it when her phone goes off again. "Tell Joannie she's fired," Miley murmurs into Lilly's shoulder.

"I will," Lilly vows, flailing an arm around until she finds the phone. She squints at the screen in the dark. _just wanted to say i'm happy for you_. She's grinning at the phone now, sleep forgotten, because that's –

That's exactly what she wanted someone to say.

_you're not disappointed i'm going to be following miley around and cleaning up her messes?_

_hey, it's your life_, Joannie says, and Lilly lies there in a strange bed in an unknown room in a foreign city. But Miley is here, her body pressed against Lilly's, her breathing relaxed and even in Lilly's ear, as familiar to Lilly as her own.

Yeah, she thinks. It is.

—

END

—


End file.
